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Software

Spreadsheet risk strikes again

I just can’t resist this one. Vista Equity Partners is paying around $100 million less than expected for Tibco Software Inc because Goldman Sachs got the number of shares wrong in the spreadsheet that did all the calculations. OK, $100 million isn’t much in the context of a $4 billion deal, but it’s an awful lot of money in any other context. But only just over twice Goldman’s fees to Tibco for the transaction. It’s not clear how the mistake arose.