A disgruntled EMC Corp. shareholder has thrown a potential legal spanner in the works ahead of its $67 billion takeover by Dell Inc., by filing a lawsuit that aims to block the acquisition.

The lawsuit, which was first reported by Bloomberg, was filed by a plaintiff named as “Su Ma” at the state court in Manhattan. It argues the acquisition deal came following a “flawed process” that will leave EMC’s shareholders short-changed. The suit names Dell, EMC and several EMC board members as defendants, and claims their personal interest in profiting financially impacted the entire negotiation process.

Bloomberg says neither Dell nor EMC was prepared to comment on the report. However, it notes that EMC CEO Joe Tucci, who is named as one of the defendants, admitted on an earnings call last Wednesday the company didn’t do “as good a job as we need to do in explaining the power of this combination.”

At the time the deal was announced, Tucci said: “Our new company will be exceptionally well-positioned for growth in the most strategic areas of next generation IT, including digital transformation, software-defined data centre, converged infrastructure, hybrid cloud, mobile and security.”

EMC had been under tremendous pressure from the activist investment firm Elliott Management Inc. to create greater shareholder value for some time, and various options were mooted, including spinning off VMware Inc. and breaking up its Federation of companies.

EMC has struggled for some years with declining growth as its older storage products are increasingly being overlooked in favor of cloud storage offered by vendors like Amazon Web Services. In response, EMC has been attempting to create newer products using flash memory and other technologies.

Bloomberg says the plaintiff is attempting to get the court to block Dell’s takeover, saying that EMC’s board agreed to terms that prevented other bidders from making competing offers.

Image credit: AJEL via pixabay.com