Motorola Mobility set a meeting date of Nov. 17 for shareholders to vote on Google’s proposed $12.5 billion buyout of the company. The meeting will take place in San Diego.
Google and Motorola Mobility Holdings on Aug. 15 announced a definitive agreement on the acquisition. At the time, the deal had been unanimously approved by the boards of both companies.
Shareholders are expected to approve the deal, which gives Google the rights to Motorola’s 17,000 patents. It also puts Google in an interesting position as it relates to OEM partners that also use Android and require updates.
Shareholders also will get to vote on “golden parachute” payments for executives. The Associated Press reports that Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha, for example, stands to gain $66 million if the deal goes through in the form of a cash bonus and accelerated vesting of stock options and shares.
The deal is expected to close by the end of this year or early 2012.
On Tuesday, former Motorola chairman and CEO Bob Galvin died at 89. For nearly three decades, he oversaw Motorola’s transformation from a maker of police radios and TVs to a worldwide leader in consumer electronics. He was instrumental in the creation of the first commercial cell phone in 1973 and construction of the first cell phone network in the early 1980s.
