Captain Smith, Awaiting Orders

Michael Dell still might pull this off, offering a slightly sweeter deal and a voting rules change:

The per-share price would be $13.75, up from an earlier $13.65, and the deal would also include a special dividend for shareholders, one of the people said.

The new deal isn’t done yet, the people cautioned.

Any new pact would delay the process for a vote by Dell shareholders likely by about another month. After two earlier delays, the vote had been set for Friday morning.

I really want to see this happen. I’m not a shareholder or anything, and I don’t know that Dell’s plan is any better than Carl Icahn’s. But the sheer size of this thing makes it incredible, like turning the Titanic just in time to miss the iceberg.