The INQ Top Five mergers that weren't

WELL, WE'VE NEVER seen this before. PayPerPost, a company that pays users to blog, has called off its plan to acquire metrics firm Performancing.com just a week after announcing the deal.

On 28 December, PeyPerPost issued a press release stating its intent to buy Performancing under the pretty straightforward declarative headline 'PayPerPost Acquires Performancing.com'.

Then, in a blog post yesterday, the headline changes to 'Performancing Deal Is Off' and the following change of heart is explained: "After much discussion and heartache we have decided to walk away from the Performancing deal. We listened to our Posties and other Metrics users, dug into the Metrics platform and regretfully found that it wasn't what we were looking for right now."

As one comment notes, "I've only been part of a couple of acquisitions and financing deals, but don't you normally do due diligence before you buy a company, not after you've announced it?"

Or as Techcrunch's Michael Arrington rubs in: "Amateur Hour at PayPerPost".

Of course, this isn't the first time a deal has been called off at a late stage so here is the Inquirer's guide to grooms and brides left waiting at the altar.

5. Lotus-Novell. This agreed combination in April 1990 seemed to be a shoo-in when the firms mysteriously called it quits a month later. There were references to disagreement over equality of representation on the board although some contended that concerns of analysts and shareholders might have been nearer the truth. Either way, networking and collaborative software might be very different today if it had gone ahead. The $1.5bn deal would have created a company almost the size of Microsoft, which had annualised run-rate revenues of about $1bn at the time. [There were rumours that Novell strait laced execs didn't take kindly to the atheistic hedonism of the Lotus folk, too. Ed.]

4. Psion-Amstrad. In July 1996, Psion called off merger talks with Amstrad. Back then, Psion was best known for its peerless handheld computers rather than the OS provider for Symbian, while Amstrad was best known for PCs and cheap electronics rather than supplying the erstwhile chairman of Tottenham Hotspur and presenter of The Apprentice. Some insiders suggested that Psion was interested in Amstrad's cellular comms unit to fulfil its plan to add wireless hooks to the Psion OS although the word smartphone was not in common currency at the time. The £234m deal went south with The Times quoting Sugar as saying Psion got "cold feet".

3. WordStar-Delrina. WordStar was still newsworthy in 1992 and trying to get its mojo back by converting the legacy revenues of its ancient, cryptic wordprocessor into an M&A rip under the leadership of former Ashton-Tate CEO Ron Posner. Delrina had fashionable WinFax faxing software but the $60m deal was nixed for "complex legal, accounting and management issues". Handy word that, "complex". The original acquisitive software vendor Symantec ended up buying Delrina. Any WordStar users left out there?(CTRL-KD)

2. Corel and Inprise-Borland. This 2000 deal between two software vendors noted for zigzagging strategies always looked rocky. Shareholders saw it as a Frankenstein-like attempt at surgery with Corel suffering from a poor cash position and Inprise-Borland losing money. To nobody's surprise the marriage was called off. Corel CEO Michael Cowpland left months later and Borland dumped the Inprise name.

1. In the manner of a celebrity couple Alcatel's combination with Lucent was on the off in 2001, and finally on again in 2006. Everybody loves a happy ending in telecoms, it seems. µ