Why wouldn't you just take the $24 billion and start a new company? Is Dell's goodwill really that valuable, are the supplier relationships that valuable? Or is it because of some legal non-compete reason?
Assets which in 2012 produced a 7.3% un-levered ROA (earnings before interest after taxes / assets) and are levered only 5x (assets / equity) in historically low rates (Lenovo is 6.7x). Not to say this is anything close to a slam dunk. But the pressure of working to make the next interest payment isn't so dissimilar from slaving to your next fund-raise.
Note the difference between capital and money, assets and liabilities, stuff and claims. Companies are arrangements of capital, physical and intellectual. If the value of that arrangement is zero or negative one liquidates, i.e. shuffles the capital around without changing its value while marking down the claims to show the presumed valuable arrangement has vaporised. The inverse of liquidation is entrepreneurship, i.e. shuffling capital into an arrangement of value. When this is successful the claims are marked up to reflect the arrangement's value.
Capital has inertia - shuffling it around takes energy, e.g. recruiting costs for intellectual capital. ABCD -> AB + C + D takes less effort than E + F + G + H -> EFGH. We only liquidate when there is nobody willing to pay for the arrangement. Similarly, we only build when there is nobody selling it.
[1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/826083/00008260831200...
I would guess that Michael Dell is betting on the fact it is easier to change the bad parts of Dell, than it is to completely re-build all the good parts.
In other words, the $24 billion is there by virtue of the company being Dell and Michael Dell's participation.