Oracle's Ellison on a short-lease in BEA Systems merger announcement
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Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who's know for his fast-moving, ad-lib quips and occasional outlandish statements, faced the painful task of putting it in slow-mode Tuesday, in announcing the mega-merger BEA Systems acquisition.
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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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SAN FRANCISCOâBEA Systems Inc. took advantage of the proximity of Oracle Corp.&#39;s OpenWorld conference here this week to introduce BEA WebLogic Server 9.0, which is designed to allow developers to rapidly
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Users of technology from both companies today expressed concern about Oracle's $8.5 billion agreement to buy BEA Systems and to fold in the latter's middleware to the Oracle software stack.
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BEA Systems Inc  shares fell nearly 6 percent on Friday to trade below Oracle Corp's  bid for the first time since it was made, as the deadline for the offer loomed with no signs of an agreement.
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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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Activist investor Carl Icahn on Friday called for BEA Systems Inc  to auction itself to the highest bidder and let shareholders decide its fate, two days before a $6.7 billion offer from Oracle Corp  was set to lapse.
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Business software maker BEA Systems Inc   has agreed to be acquired by Oracle Corp  for  $8.5 billion, a 14 percent premium to its first offer, the  companies said on Wednesday.
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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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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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Business software maker BEA Systems Inc. has said it will let Oracle Corp.'s $6.7 billion takeover bid expire Sunday, intensifying the pressure on management to prove the company is worth more than the offer it's leaving on the table.
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Oracle has set a deadline for Sunday on its bid to buy BEA, which has officially rejected its $6.7 billion offer.
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Users of technology from both companies today expressed concern about Oracle's $8.5 billion agreement to buy BEA Systems and to fold in the latter's middleware to the Oracle software stack.The BEA board of director's vote to approve the sale for $19.375 a share comes just three months after it spurned Oracle's $6.7 billion offer in October to buy the middleware vendor.Burc Oral, a senior architect at Cambridge, Mass.-based government contractor Cell Exchange, said that while the acquisition will give users the option of buying a database and application server from a single vendor, he also expects a period of "confusion" for BEA users because of technology overlap.Oral, who also heads up the New England BEA User Group, said that he expects that the deal will likely mean the end of some products -- "a little from Oracle and a lot from BEA."Oral said that Oracle would be well served to retain BEA's WebLogic product, which has a hearty following among users, who have been provided with good support from BEA over the years. "[BEA] had their [WebLogic] product out there many years before Oracle was out there," Oral said. "[It] is very easy to use and BEA has always been very friendly to the user community with downloads and documentation. Oracle doesn't have this wide acceptance from the user community in terms of applications. With BEA life is a lot easier."But, he noted that since Oracle made its first bid for BEA in October, the middleware firm has been less responsive than usual to the user group. In addition, Oral said that users from previous Oracle acquisitions including Siebel and Hyperion appear to be "getting better value" from a larger organization that they did before the acquisition.Jim Burgard, assistant vice chancellor of university computing and communication at the University of New Orleans, said that he doesn't expect the deal to significantly impact his organization, which uses WebLogic with Oracle's PeopleSoft applications. However, he added that he "does have some concerns about future licensing and maintenance costs now that all the components are owned by one vendor."Mike Gilpin, an analyst with Forrester Research, said that Burgard's fear is not unfounded, noting that there is a chance that support costs for users of BEA's WebLogic Server, AquaLogic Service Bus, AquaLogic BPM, WebLogic Event Server, and AquaLogic SOA Management products will grow after the deal closes later this year.Gilpin did note that Oracle has promised "lifetime support" for BEA products that overlap Oracle's offerings. That means that BEA users won't have to dump their BEA products but may over time pay more for support, he said. If they do move to Oracle's technology, they'll have to pay for migration, Gilpin added."Oracle has assured us that they will be very mindful of protecting the interests of existing BEA customers, just as they have been for customers of PeopleSoft and Siebel -- and I find their assurances credible," Gilpin said "It's not in Oracle's interest to aggravate these customers, In many cases they are already Oracle customers, anyway."Todd Langille, project manager of Administrative Computing for Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., said that he has concerns over whether Oracle has a "clear coherent strategy" for its growing software portfolio, which includes many similar products.For example, he noted that Oracle bought business intelligence software vendors Hyperion and Siebel despite have its own BI tool set, Discover. "I take a look at that mix of acquisitions, and I'm not really sure what their data warehouse strategy will be with all their business intelligence products in play," he remarked.Langille did note that because Dartmouth runs both Oracle Application Server and BEA's WebLogic software, it's not as important to him which product becomes the database vendor's primary middleware offering. "We see [the acquisition] as probably a knocking down of competition, but given that we use both products, we stand to benefit from whatever intellectual properly Oracle [gains]," he added.BEA should expedite Oracle's efforts to construct a standards-based middleware architecture, Langille said. However, he acknowledged that it will take some time before any wholesale replacement for Oracle Application Server arrives."I don't think products are identical, and for that reason, I don't think one will disappear quickly," he added.Patricia Dues, enterprise program manager for the city of Las Vegas, said she hopes Oracle can use BEA technology to improve its various offerings. For example, she said she hopes software acquired from BEA can augment the analytical capability of Oracle's Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition offering recently purchased by the city."We realize what Oracle has done with other acquisitions in taking the best of both worlds. There's always room for improvement, and this sparks our interest with the acquisition of BEA," said Dues.Dues downplayed any concerns that Oracle's ongoing attrition of its software competitors - both large and small - may divert the company's focus away from existing customers or product roadmaps. "I don't see this as what Larry [Ellison] wants. I think there's a strategy behind it all. I can't say that I feel like [Oracle] is going to desert us, they have too many products to manage," she said.
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SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 29 -- After shooing away Oracle's $6.7 billion takeover bid, BEA Systems dug in its heels for a potentially disruptive battle with its largest shareholder, activist investor Carl C. Icahn.
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$21 per share? You're having a laugh Oracle scoffed at BEA last night, describing the middleware's self-set $21 per share price tag as "impossibly high" and saying it had no intention of raising its offer.â¦
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At an asking price of nearly $8 billion, BEA Systems was finally talked into an Oracle buyout. But with Oracle's long history of software buyouts, will it cut BEA -- and its many business customers -- enough slack?
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Oracle Corp  on Wednesday won a three-month-long campaign to buy BEA Systems Inc  by raising its bid for the business software maker by 14 percent to $8.5 billion.