BEA: We'll let Oracle deadline expire
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BEA Systems reiterated on Friday that it would not accept&#160;Oracle&#39;s $17 per share acquisition bid, and also said it would allow&#160;a deadline Oracle had set for Sunday 5 p.m. PDT&#160;to expire.In a public statement -- just the latest salvo in merger talks that have had a distinctly icy quality -- BEA&#39;s vice president of planning and development, William Klein told Oracle President Charles Phillips that the company&#39;s offer was &quot;unacceptable.&quot;&#160;BEA has said it would accept a $21 per share bid.That would result in an $8.3 billion price tag for the company, significantly more than Oracle&#39;s offer, which works out to $6.7 billion. BEA&#39;s stock was trading at about $16.80 per share midday Friday.&quot;As fiduciaries, our Board cannot endorse a proposal that it has concluded significantly undervalues BEA,&quot; Klein said in the statement. &quot;We therefore assume that your proposal will expire on October 28.&quot;An Oracle spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment.
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A deadline on private bids for Northern Rock, the British bank almost ruined by the squeeze on global credit, was to expire on Monday amid speculation that three proposals will be made to the board.
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Oracle continues to snap up smaller software companies even while it battles to acquire middleware vendor BEA. On Wednesday Oracle said it had agreed to buy Interlace Systems, which makes operations planning software, for an undisclosed price.Interlace sells software that pulls together data from different sources and allows companies to run &quot;what if&quot; scenarios on the data to determine the outcome of changes they make.Its Integrated Business Planning product has been aimed mainly at manufacturing companies. Customers include Seagate Technologies, the disk drive maker, and Eaton, which makes electrical systems and power systems.Oracle said it would integrate the software with its Enterprise Performance Management System, including the&#160;Hyperion software it bought earlier this year, to give customers better financial and operational planning tools. It won&#39;t discuss a timeline for integration until the merger closes, which is expected to happen next month.Oracle will also continue to offer Interlace&#39;s products on a standalone basis and continue to work with databases and application servers from other vendors, including Microsoft&#39;s SQL Server, IBM&#39;s WebSphere, and SAP&#39;s NetWeaver, according to an FAQ on Oracle&#39;s Web site.Oracle said it would retain Interlace staff with &quot;significant domain expertise&quot; in its products.Interlace is the 10th acquisition Oracle has announced this year and the 36th since 2005. The company said it has become fast and efficient at integrating them all, with specially assigned staff and &quot;proven templates and processes for repeatable success in integration.&quot;On Oct. 12,&#160;Oracle offered $6.7 billion to buy middleware vendor BEA.&#160;BEA called the offer too low, but Oracle on Tuesday said it was a &quot;generous&quot; offer and&#160;gave BEA until Sunday to accept.
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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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Hewlett-Packard has extended the deadline for Mercury Interactive shareholders to tender their shares in favor of the companies'Â proposed $4.5 billion merger.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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With Oracle&#39;s $9.2 billion tender offer for PeopleSoft set to expire Friday, David A. Duffield, PeopleSoft&#39;s chief executive, accused Oracle on Thursday of spreading
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A deadline for shareholders of the London Stock Exchange to back a hostile takeover of the LSE by US stock exchange operator Nasdaq was set to expire.
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BEA Systems reiterated on Friday that it would not accept&#160;Oracle&#39;s $17 per share acquisition bid, and also said it would allow&#160;a deadline Oracle had set for Sunday 5 p.m. PDT&#160;to expire.
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Ziff Davis - The long wait for a decision in the government's antitrust trial against Oracle has prompted the company to extend the deadline yet again for its &#36;7.7 billion attempted buyout of PeopleSoft.
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Oracle  withdrew its $6.7 billion bid for business software maker BEA Systems  on Sunday, setting the stage for a proxy battle between activist investor Carl Icahn and the BEA board.
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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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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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'I want to be wooed' BEA invited Oracle to play kiss-chase yesterday, as the database vendor came over all tough and macho in its effort to acquire the middleware firm.â¦
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The European Union on Thursday set a new deadline of Nov. 9 to conclude its antitrust review of Oracle Corp.'s &#36;7.7 billion takeover bid for rival business software maker PeopleSoft Inc.
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Oracle has rejected&#160;BEA Systems&#39; proposed purchase price of $21 per share, calling it &quot;impossibly high&quot; for Oracle or any other company to pay.In a letter to BEA&#39;s board dated Oct. 25, Oracle again urged the company to accept its offer of $17 per share, an amount that Oracle said it was &quot;unwilling to increase.&quot;&quot;The $21 per share price is a multiple of nearly eleven times BEA&#39;s last twelve months&#39; reported maintenance revenues,&quot; wrote Oracle President Charles Phillips. &quot;Nobody would seriously consider paying that kind of multiple for a software company with shrinking new license sales.&quot;He noted that Oracle was the only company making an offer for BEA. &quot;Apparently no other companies think that BEA is worth $17 per share, let alone $21 per share,&quot; Philips wrote.Oracle again urged BEA to put its offer to a shareholder vote.&#160;Oracle&#39;s bid of $17 per share&#160;values BEA at about $6.7 billion. A price of $21 per share would value it at $8.3 billion.Oracle said it had an obligation to its own shareholders to &quot;exercise price discipline when evaluating acquisition opportunities.&quot; It reminded BEA of its&#160;deadline of Sunday evening&#160;to accept the offer, after which it will &quot;move on&quot; and consider other acquisitions.Oracle made its surprise bid for BEA on Oct. 12, hoping to strengthen its line of middleware products and grow its customer base. BEA, which had been under pressure from investor Carl Icahn to sell, quickly rejected the offer as too low, and on Thursday came back with its suggested higher price. Oracle&#39;s offer &quot;significantly undervalues BEA&quot; and is not in the best interests of BEA&#39;s shareholders, it said on Thursday.BEA officials weren&#39;t available for comment on Oracle&#39;s latest letter.&#160;
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Carl C. Icahn thinks BEA Systems should sell itself for $17 a share. Except when he doesnât. Right now, at least, the corporate rabble-rouser is furious that BEA refused to accept Oracleâs takeover offer, one that expired Sunday night. Mr. Icahn on Friday even took the next step of filing a lawsuit in Delaware court to [...].
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SAN FRANCISCO - Oracle Corp. , the third-largest software maker, gave BEA Systems Inc.'s directors five days to consider a $6.7 billion takeover offer before it expires. BEA said it can't accept Oracle's price.