Arcadia Opposing Symex/Accelrys Merger

Richard S. Rofe, the managing director of Arcadia Capital Advisors, is unhappy about a proposal to merge Symex Technologies Inc. with Accelrys Inc.

These are both research-and-development companies, both headquartered in California and chartered in Delaware. Accelrys certainly has the more intriguing way of describing its work. It is the "producer of various modeling and simulation software for both life and materials science research, like cerius, catalyst, insightll, quanta."

A little googling of those names shows me that Cerius software is used by the Laboratory for Molecular Simulation at Texas A&M. (I will refrain from telling my favorite Aggie joke now.) Apparently, Cerius is "legacy" software," and so is "no longer supported by Accelrys."

Anyway, Arcadia is unhappy because it owns a stake in Symyx and believes Symyx could get a much better deal elsewhere than it is getting from Accelrys. Symex' board acknowledges the receipt of cash offers, which it has called "inadequate, from a financial point of view, considering the price offered in comparison to the terms of the proposed Merger with Accelrys and long-term value which the Merger could provide to Symyx stockholders, and Symyx valuation as a stand-alone company."

In a release, Rofe said: "As a long-term Symyx shareholder, we would be more comfortable with the certainty of cash now rather than be dependent upon the execution risk, integration risk, market risk, and other uncertainties in the current economic environment related to any expected long-term value of the Symyx-Accelrys combination."