Another Oracle exec says company might lower offer price for ...
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WILMINGTON, Del. Another Oracle executive says the company could lower its offering price for rival PeopleSoft. During testimony this morning in Delaware, Oracle co-president Safra Catz said PeopleSoft&#39;s declining
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ORACLE IS considering dropping its hostile $7.7 billion bid for rival software maker PeopleSoft by one-third to one-fourth. Oracle co-president Safra Catz said that having seen PeopleSoft&#39;s 2004 performance
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Given the silence from the BEA Systems and Oracle camps early this week about Oracle's unsolicited proposal to buy its middleware rival, the community at large can only sit back and guess what might be the next scene in this drama.The two companies have been keeping quiet since last Friday's blockbuster revelation that Oracle was seeking to acquire BEA for $17 per share, or about $6.7 billion. Both have spurned requests this week for media briefings to elaborate on the issue.Undoubtedly, much is taking place behind the scenes, as aggressive Oracle seeks to add BEA to the impressive list of formerly independent companies it has acquired, which has included, among others, PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems. BEA, meanwhile, also has to be pondering its next step.Officials at Sun Microsystems, which invented the Java platform that serves as the backbone of many BEA and Oracle products, seemed to be caught off-guard when asked about the proposed merger at a Sun event in San Francisco on Tuesday evening.Chuckling, Rich Green, Sun executive vice president of software, suggested contacting Oracle CEO Larry Ellison about the matter. But when asked what impacts might be felt by the Java platform itself, Green did not see any negative effects."They're both Java supporters," Green said. "I think it's neutral to Java. I think it's just fine."Sun's James Gosling, a founder of Java and chief technology officer for Sun's client software group, concurred. "They're both big supporters of Java. I don't think it's going to have much effect one way or the other," Gosling said.Oracle has pledged to protect investments customers have made in BEA products. While Oracle's move has been characterized in some circles as a hostile takeover attempt, BEA's initial response merely said the Oracle offer undervalued the company.Major BEA stockholder Carl Icahn has been prodding for a sale of BEA, prompting one BEA insider to suggest Icahn did not have enough shares and would have a hard time getting control of the BEA board of directors in order to make the sale happen. Now, Oracle has forced BEA's hand. If history is any indication, the sale is likely to happen. PeopleSoft opposed Oracle but eventually succumbed."We certainly saw how persistent Oracle was in chasing PeopleSoft," said Dennis Callaghan, enterprise software analyst at the 451 Group, who expects the merger to be completed.Options for BEA to resist Oracle may be limited. To take the company private and avoid a merger, BEA would need to find a private equity partner, Callaghan said. And then there is Icahn, owning a significant stake in the company and wanting the company sold."It's not like [BEA CEO and co-founder] Alfred Chuang can regain control of the company and take it private. He's got to make his shareholders happy," said Callaghan.Even BEA employees could profit on a merger if they bought stock at a discounted price and then were able to sell it at an inflated price as a result of a merger, he said.? They might lose their jobs at BEA, but a lot of them would be very employable, winding up with startup ventures, he said.Callaghan added he expects Oracle to increase its offer. HP is a possibility as another potential buyer for BEA, but HP has had troubles of its own integrating acquired companies, such as Peregrine and Bluestone Software, Callaghan saidHe gave credence to the notion that Oracle may be buying BEA to stock up on its middleware offerings as the database market, which has been Oracle's cash cow, now features free, open source offerings from competitors.? "From what I understand, [databases is] not really a growing business at this point, Callaghan said.A dignitary in the Java development space had a mostly positive reaction to the proposed merger."Oracle and BEA both have amazing engineering teams, but Oracle's business operation is clearly many, many times the size and scale of BEA's," said Rick Ross, founder of the Javalobby Web site for Java developers. Having both teams under the same umbrella would create great opportunities for innovation, Ross said. And BEA's technology, such as the JRockit Java Virtual Machine, could become more widely used, he said.But there could be a down side, Ross noted."As the realized market share of a single player moves to such a dominant position, it becomes less and less likely that the startup innovator can gain a foothold," he said.IBM, BEA, and Oracle are battling in what research firm IDC calls the application deployment software space, which is comprised of application servers, integration software, message-oriented middleware and transaction processing monitors. This market space, valued at $9.4 billion in 2006, is growing at nearly 18 percent year over year because of trends in integration, business process management, and SOA, said Maureen Fleming, IDC program director.When including software mainframes, IBM last year had a 36 percent market share, valued at $3.3 billion. BEA trailed with 11 percent or $1 billion, and Oracle had 9 percent, or $850 million. The figures include license and maintenance revenuesWhen leaving out mainframe software, the market size dropped to $6.5 billion, with IBM still leading with a 20 percent market share, or $1.3 billion and Oracle garnering 13 percent or $850,000. BEA came in right behind Oracle with 12 percent or $840,000.
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Two days after a PeopleSoft Inc. board member suggested the company may be willing to sell to Oracle Corp. for the right price, an Oracle director said his firm&#39;s offer to buy its Pleasanton rival for $21 per share may not be final.
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Oracle Corp.'s hostile $7.7 billion bid for rival software maker PeopleSoft Inc. could drop by one-third to one-fourth, Oracle co-president Safra Catz said Monday.
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[Wilmington, Delaware | Reuters News Service, 11 October 2004] - Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison said on Friday that Oracle has talked about revising its $21-per-share offer to buy rival PeopleSoft, but he dented Wall Street expectations by saying
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Oracle, which is in the midst of a hostile takeover attempt of rival PeopleSoft, on Monday raised its offer for the smaller software company by $3 per share to $24 per share.
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LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) - Oracle&#39;s chief executive Larry Ellison on Friday said the company may be inclined to lower its $7.7 billion hostile offer for PeopleSoft, according to published reports.
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Exec says hostile bid was made out of fear that PeopleSoft would deploy tough defensive measures. WILMINGTON, Del. (Dow Jones) - Oracle Corp.
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Oracle&#160;on Tuesday morning said that BEA Systems has officially rejected its&#160;offer to acquire the company. BEA had previously said the&#160;offer was too low.&quot;Last night we were told by Bill Klein, Vice President -- Business Planning and Development (speaking on behalf of the board), that BEA&#39;s board again rejected our proposed price of $17 per share in cash,&quot; Oracle said in a statement, adding that the BEA board &quot;has refused to meet with us since we made our October 9th proposal.&quot;Oracle set a deadline for Sunday at 5 p.m. local time on its $17 per share bid.&quot;Oracle has no interest in a long, drawn-out process to acquire BEA,&quot; Oracle said.The total value of the bid is about $6.7 billion.(More to follow.)
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Oracle Corp.  Chief Executive Larry Ellison said on Friday that Oracle has talked about revising its &#36;21-per-share offer to buy rival PeopleSoft Inc. , but he dented Wall Street expectations by saying Oracle has focused more on lowering the bid than raising it.
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Thanks to a decline in Microsoft shares, the stock portion of the company's offer has dropped. That means that as of now Microsoft is offering less than it was four days ago. To match its original $31 per share offer, Microsoft would have to boost the exc
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BEA Systems has told Oracle the two companies can still make a deal -- just not the one on the table.Oracle released a statement Tuesday, saying BEA&#39;s board of directors had officially turned down its offer to buy the company. It set a deadline of Sunday at 5 p.m. Pacific time for BEA to accept the $17-per-share bid.But several hours later, BEA fired back its own missive in the form of a letter from William Klein, who is vice president of planning and development, to Oracle president Charles Phillips. In the letter, Klein characterized Oracle&#39;s offer as too low but made it clear BEA is not against being acquired for the right price.&quot;BEA is worth significantly more than $17 to Oracle, to others, and most importantly to BEA shareholders,&quot; the letter said. &quot;BEA&#39;s Board has not indicated that it would be opposed to a transaction that appropriately reflects BEA&#39;s value, reached through a reasonable process.&quot;An Oracle spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.The total value of Oracle&#39;s existing bid is about $6.7 billion, and the enterprise software giant said Tuesday it &quot;has no interest in a long, drawn-out process to acquire BEA.&quot;So far, the BEA-Oracle talks have sparked dueling public statements, missed meetings, and shareholder angst, but haven&#39;t been nearly as heated as other merger battles, such as&#160;Oracle&#39;s acquisition of PeopleSoft.Still, it remains unclear whether Oracle will increase its offer for BEA, which it termed &quot;generous&quot; in Tuesday&#39;s statement.&quot;Oracle typically has some [pricing] ratios it uses in its acquisition strategy,&quot; Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang said. &quot;If they really want to dominate the middleware space, this is an acquisition they&#39;d want to make.&quot;If it succeeds in buying BEA, Oracle would swallow up a major competitor in the application server space, a scenario that has had some observers wondering about the fate of BEA&#39;s technologies.Oracle&#39;s move to purchase BEA is only the latest in a string of high-profile buys in 2007. The company has forked over billions for a wide array of enterprise software companies, including business process management vendor&#160;Hyperion Solutions&#160;and application data grid player&#160;Tangosol.BEA has some products that would fill holes in Oracle&#39;s portfolio. But the two companies compete closely on other fronts, such as Web server and ESB (enterprise service bus) offerings.&quot;Those are areas with lots of overlap,&quot; Wang said. &quot;But there&#39;s a lot of good technologies on both sides.&quot;NOTE: This story includes comments from analyst Ray Wang that were also used in a previous update.
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While it has so far rejected each of Oracle&#39;s takeover offers, PeopleSoft&#39;s board of directors is willing to talk about a deal at the right price, a member of PeopleSoft&#39;s board said on October 5. On the stand
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Oracle's offer of $17 per share? No thanks, BEA says again--and this time, it's countering with what it sees as a better value for its shareholders.
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Soon after an Oracle director said Oracle&#39;s current US$21 per share offer for control of PeopleSoft may not be its final bid, Oracle Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Larry Ellison countered that the company is as likely to lower its bid as to raise it.
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The PeopleSoft director who has been leading the defense of the software company's anti-takeover measures said Tuesday the company's board is willing to talk about a deal with rival Oracle.