CEO and founder Michael Dell spoke with Bloomberg TV anchor Erik Schatzker at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York yesterday.
Dell said that since going private, "I think about 20 percent of my time has been freed up." He said, "You think about all of the time spent dealing with governance and preparing for investor activities and dealing with various shareholder requests… This can be quite distracting, right, if you try to grow a business."
On whether more public companies should go private, Dell said, "I've had quite a few of them contact me and ask me about how we went through the process and what it was like and that sort of thing. It certainly wasn’t an easy thing to go through the process, once we got through it, it's been a lot easier managing the business as a private entity." On the companies who have contacted him for advice on going private, Dell said, "Some in Dell's size range, some a little larger, quite -- a lot more smaller than Dell. But I'd say more than 10."