SCO's woes worsen with delisting

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Following hot on the heels of its filing for bankruptcy protection earlier this week, embattled vendor, SCO has warned of its delisting from the Nasdaq stock exchange.

SCO said in a statement late yesterday that "the Company's securities will be delisted from Nasdaq on 27 September 2007 pending an appeal". This comes, it said, as a result of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing Tuesday.

SCO will next week go up in front of the Nasdaq's Listing Qualifications Panel, made up of a group of independent industry experts, to present a viable business plan it hopes can prevent it being stripped of its public listing.

But the likelihood the plan will be accepted is far from assured, given the fact it has called its own viability as a company into question with the bankruptcy filing following a major setback in its long running copyright infringement battle with Novell, IBM and other Unix vendors.

Last month the judge presiding over the copyright case found in favour of Novell as the owner of the Unix and UnixWare copyrights, dismissing SCO's charges of slander and breach of contract. This effectively killed off the case that has consumed the vendor's resources since it began in 2004.

According to the vendor's last financial reports filed in June, it had $13 million (£6.5 million) in the bank, but had set $5.5 million of that aside to cover costs of the Novell legal battle and royalties.

SCO has also lost much of the value of its stock since the 10 August lawsuit ruling, dropping $1.20 (£0.60) from its then share price to close yesterday at $0.20.

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