Oracle buying BEA Systems in $8.5B deal
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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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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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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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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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On the same day its plans to&#160;buy middleware giant BEA Systems&#160;rocked the technology world, Oracle also revealed Wednesday that its string of niche acquisitions will continue through the purchase of document-capture vendor Captovation.
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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.
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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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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 has finally won its prize, the rival BEA Systems, after sweetening the offer by 14 percent, just three months after BEA rejected its original bid.
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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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We've already established what you are, now were just working out a price BEA blinked this morning and said it would enter takeover negotiations with Oracle, and anyone else thatâs interested, at a floor of $21 per share.â¦
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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.
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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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US business software giant Oracle said Wednesday it had reached an agreement to take over rival BEA Systems in a 8.5 billion dollar deal.
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BEA Systems Inc  shares fell 4 percent on Tuesday on concerns a $6.7 billion takeover bid by Oracle Corp  will fall through after both sides refused to budge from their positions.
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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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After shooing away Oracle Corp.'s $6.7 billion takeover bid, business software maker BEA Systems Inc. dug in its heels for a potentially disruptive battle with its largest shareholder, activist investor Carl Icahn.