BEA says company for sale at about $8.2 bln
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BEA Systems Inc  said on Thursday it is prepared to sell itself for $8.2 billion, which is a 24 percent premium to a bid from Oracle Corp  that the business software maker rejected.
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The board of BEA Systems Inc  said on Monday that it is still looking at ways to maximize shareholder value, including the possible sale of the company, after a bid from Oracle Corp  expired on Sunday.
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Oracle Corp , the world's  third-largest software maker, won a three-month-long campaign  to buy BEA Systems Inc  by raising its bid for the  company by 14 percent to $8.5 billion.
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BEA Systems Inc  said on  Thursday it is willing to sell itself for $8.2 billion, but the  price was rejected as "impossibly high" by Oracle Corp  , the only company that has publicly expressed interest  in the software maker.
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BEA Systems&#39; largest shareholder is demanding that its board of directors allow shareholders to vote on a&#160;$17-per-share purchase offer from Oracle, which is set to expire at 5 p.m. Pacific Time Sunday.Carl Icahn, who holds more than 58 million shares of BEA stock, said in a statement that he has begun lawsuit proceedings in Delaware to force an annual shareholder meeting &quot;before any scorched earth transactions (such as stock issuances, asset sales, acquisitions or similar occurrences) take place at BEA, other than transactions that are approved by shareholders.&quot;The investor accused BEA&#39;s board of intending &quot;to find ways to derail a sale and maintain your control of the company.&quot;&#160;BEA&#39;s board has repeatedly rejected Oracle&#39;s bid&#160;to buy the company,&#160;demanding $21 per share. Oracle&#39;s offer amounts to $6.7 billion, while BEA&#39;s demand works out to $8.3 billion. Oracle has called that price &quot;impossibly high.&quot;Icahn said BEA can avoid litigation if it conducts an auction sale, allowing shareholders to consider offers from the highest bidder.&quot;BEA should not allow the stalking horse bid from Oracle to disappear (failure to take the Oracle bid as a stalking horse would be a grave dereliction of your fiduciary duty in my view),&quot; he wrote. &quot;But if no topping bid arises it should be up to the BEA shareholders to decide whether to take the Oracle bid or remain as an independent Company.&quot;Icahn also demanded that &quot;BEA should agree not to take any action that would dilute voting by issuing stock, entrench management or derail a potential sale of BEA.&quot;Shares of BEA stock closed at $16.50 and were trading at $16.75 after hours on Friday.A BEA spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
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International Business Machines Corp.  IBM.N has put its personal computing business up for sale in  a deal that could be worth as much as $2 billion, the New York  Times reported on Friday.
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Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said  on Friday a sale of BEA Systems Inc  to a strategic  acquirer would maximize the value of its shares and that he  might seek to nominate directors to the software maker&#39;s board.
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IBM IBM.N is looking to sell its personal computer business in a deal that could be worth up to $2 billion, The New York Times reported on Friday, capping a gradual withdrawal from the business it pioneered.
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(InfoWorld) - Talk about raining on a parade. BEA Systems concluded its cheery BEAWorld San Francisco conference last Wednesday. Highlights of the seemingly triumphant event included presentations from executives like Chairman, CEO and President Alfred Chuang and product introductions like its new application server, WebLogic Server 10.3, and a dynamic application development platform called Project Genesis. Then, two days later, well-known corporate activist and billionaire Carl Icahn, a BEA investor, expressed intentions to seek the sale of BEA, believing the company would have a hard time staying afloat as a standalone company in its industry. Icahn may seek to seat a board of directors more favorable to his plea. But not so fast, a BEA insider said. While the company itself has continued to decline comment on the Icahn matter, this insider familiar with BEA's investor-related workings did not give out much hope for Icahn to get a more compliant board elected. Icahn has an 8.5 percent stake in the company, which would represent about 33.5 million shares, said the source, who asked to not be identified. "But if you look closely at the filing, you'll see about 16.2 million of those are options, not actual holdings," the source said. "He only owns about 4 percent," said the source. "What this means is that if he was gong to exercise those options, he'd have to plunk down another several hundred million in cash right now," the source said. Further complicating any efforts to force a sale is that BEA is one of several companies that has had to restate past financial statements due to backdating of stock options. With that issue still ongoing, the company cannot even hold an annual meeting where Icahn could attempt to elect a favorable board, according to the source. An annual meeting is expected to be held this fall, but even then, BEA only re-elects three or four members of its 10-member board every year, the source said. Thus Icahn could not get control of the board in a single year. Just publicly announcing plans to try to seek a sale of a company can drive up a stock price, the source said. BEA's stock went up 4 percent Friday, the source said. Still, Icahn's setting sights on a software company like BEA, which has only intellectual property assets, "might be a sign of things to come for the tech world," said the source.Â  Icahn has been involved in similar efforts with such companies as Motorola and Lear. Icahn could not be immediately reached on Monday afternoon. BEA has been the target of takeover rumors before. One particular company that has stood out as a potential suitor has been Oracle. But BEA has continued to chug along independently although its license revenues in the most recent quarter shrunk 9 percent, to $123.1 million, over the same time period a year ago. BEA also has plans to move into a new headquarters in downtown San Jose, Calif. next year, even getting a city subsidy to encourage the move. Whether that office building would bear the name of BEA, a prospective new parent company, or possibly remain empty remains to be seen.
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Software maker BEA Systems Inc's  board said on Monday it is holding out for a $21-a-share takeover offer, a day after its larger rival Oracle Corp  withdrew its $17-a-share offer.
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Market share and technology, a sometimes unbeatable combination, is the raison d'etre behind Oracle's acquisition of BEA, say several industry analysts. What Oracle wanted was access to the high-quality, large installed customer base that BEA owned. The high-end customers who use middleware for the most demanding applications are owned by either BEA or IBM, so this acquisition inches Oracle closer to IBM's scale, says Yefim Natis, a Gartner vice president. If the acquisition is approved by the SEC, it will still put Oracle in second place behind IBM as the leading application infrastructure vendor.But analysts differ as to whether the acquisition will mean a merger of the two companies' middleware into a refused Fusion, or that Oracle will instead offer two separate product lines, as it does with its acquired PeopleSoft and JDEdwards applications."When Oracle buys a company, it usually buy it because it has better technology that beat it in the market," Bart Narter, a senior analyst with Celent, a financial research and consulting firm. Narter said BEA's technology has some real advantages, especially in the securities industry, where firms are looking for low latency with performance in the single digit millisecond time frame to handle the huge volume of trades.But the biggest implication for IT is that the acquisition brings "best of breed" functionality into the middle layer of the Fusion platform, Narter said. It is likely that the next version of Fusion middleware suite will be a combination of both BEA and Oracle products, Natis said: "Users should not make the assumption that BEA products will be discontinued."For example, JRocket is the leading JVM, one that has significant extensions beyond the basics, said Gartner's Natis. It's an example of a BEA product that is complimentary to Fusion. "It is a no-brainer. JRocket is [one of] BEA's family jewels," he said. By contrast, Natis noted that Oracle's OC4J (Oracle Container for Java) is "an ordinary product" while JRocket is "arguably the best implementation of J2EE in the industry." He expects JRocket to replace Oracle's J2EE solution.Likewise, BEA earlier acquired Plum Tree Technology, which was considered the industry leading technology for BPM (business process management), another jewel that can be brought into Fusion, Natis said.However, analysts from both IDC and AMR see it differently. While BEA may be used to fill in gaps in the Fusion portfolio as Natis indicates, Dan Vesset, a senior analyst with IDC, believes Oracle will maintain the two independent, but competing product portfolios."We expect to see Oracle operate BEA as a key brand within its Fusion middleware portfolio. We do not expect too much in the way of product rationalization," Vesset said. Rather than delaying Fusion, Vesset said Fusion is on its own path. Where BEA has an offering that will help Fusion, it will be used and could even speed the introduction of Fusion, he added.Dennis Gaughan, a research director at AMR Research, agrees with Vesset, saying that some of the BEA tools could be used to accelerate Fusion middleware capabilities. Gaughan also said that Oracle has made it clear that Fusion middleware is the company's strategic middleware platform and will not be replaced by BEA's or any other acquired products. "Larry [Ellison] reiterated that this morning," said Gaughan.What most analysts agreed on is that the key to owning the enterprise's IT business will by owning the middleware that IT uses. "The middleware touches everything," said Natis, "it is the switchboard."
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British Airways  announced a plane order worth $8.2 billion at list prices on Thursday, including 12 A380 planes from Airbus  and 24 787 airliners from Boeing Co .
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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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Oracle has agreed to buy BEA Systems for around $8.5 billion, the two companies announced today.
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Sberbank was poised to raise $8.8 billion in a secondary stock offering, the second largest in Russian history.
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NEW YORK -- International Business Machines Corp. has reportedly put its personal computer business up for sale in a deal that could fetch as much as $2 billion and close an era for an industry pioneer which
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Oracle has agreed to buy BEA Systems for about $8.5 billion, or $19.375 per share, the companies announced.