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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BEA Systems said Thursday it is prepared to discuss a sale of the company to Oracle Corp. and other potential suitors at a price of $21 per share.
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BEA Systems made good Sunday on its promise to let a 5 p.m. Pacific Time&#160;deadline expire on Oracle&#39;s $17-per-share offer to buy the company.
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Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said Friday his company is considering lowering its $21-per-share offer for PeopleSoft Inc.
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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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After allowing Oracleâs buyout offer to expire on Sunday, BEA Systems defended its inaction in a letter to its largest shareholder, Carl C. Icahn, saying the offer was simply too low.
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The Motley Fool - It appears that Larry Ellison took to the stage last week with more drama in mind than he had the right to perform. Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL - News) really did produce a strong quarter, but the CEO may have been speaking with feet of clay when he came out strongly in regard to rival enterprise-software developer SAP (NYSE: S News). An SAP representative took the time to give me his company's side of the story, to which I've added my own Foolish touch.
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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.
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Can you feel the love? Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people ) Chief Executive Larry Ellison said again yesterday that that he intends to prevail in his takeover of PeopleSoft (nasdaq: PSFT - news - people
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BEA Systems Inc. chose the opening day of competitor Oracle&#39;s annual user conference in San Francisco to talk about its next version of the BEA WebLogic Application Server platform.
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BEA Systems made good Sunday on its promise to let a 5 p.m. Pacific Time&#160;deadline expire on Oracle&#39;s $17-per-share offer to buy the company.The enterprise software maker&#39;s board of directors had already said publicly that Oracle&#39;s bid, which amounts to $6.7 billion, was too low.&#160;BEA instead named a price of $21 per share, which works out to roughly $8.3 billion.Oracle issued a brief statement Sunday that was terse in tone, but nonetheless did not rule out a future bid: &quot;The BEA shareholders should not assume that Oracle will renew its $17 per share offer in the future. Over time many things can change: BEA&#39;s business might materially weaken, the stock market can fall further from its recent record highs, or Oracle may have committed its capital elsewhere.&quot;A BEA spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.Oracle has coveted BEA&#39;s customer base and share of the middleware market, but company officials called BEA&#39;s demand &quot;impossibly high.&quot;While Oracle&#39;s next move remains to be seen, other companies may look to acquire BEA.Burc Oral, president of the New England BEA User Group, brought up some oft-mentioned names -- HP, S- but said perhaps an unlikely suitor will emerge for the firm. &quot;I have always thought that stackwise, HP is a good candidate. I was also thinking about a sleeping giant, like Computer Associates. They have no overlap.&quot;Of course, there is still the possibility that Oracle will end up buying BEA after all, and perhaps soon.BEA&#39;s largest shareholder, billionaire Carl Icahn, has demanded the board allow shareholders to consider Oracle&#39;s bid.Icahn, who holds more than 58 million shares of BEA stock, said in a statement that he has filed suit 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 also accused BEA&#39;s board of intending &quot;to find ways to derail a sale&quot; and maintain control of the company.Icahn said BEA can avoid litigation if it conducts an auction sale, allowing shareholders to consider offers from the highest bidder.An Oracle purchase would prompt an uncertain future for BEA customers, according to Oral.&quot;I think the support and maintenance will be honored for at least three years [if Oracle buys BEA],&quot; he said. &quot;The issue is, what is the product development that is going to happen?&quot;Change wouldn&#39;t occur immediately under Oracle, but would subsequently do so in dramatic fashion, he predicted. &quot;For a year, BEA is going to sail as it is. Then there is going to be a major consolidation in the product space.&quot;Prakash Malani, a BEA user from the Los Angeles, California area, said sale talks come at a time when BEA&#39;s fortunes are middling.&quot;I believe they have excellent products that compete very well in the market place. However, their products are being commoditized, innovation is slowing down, and their big bet on SOA [service-oriented architecture] has yet to be paid off,&quot; Malani wrote in an e-mail message. &quot;They have missed [the] mark on some technologies like RIA (Rich Internet Application) and their top talent is being poached by companies like Google.&quot;
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Editor&#39;s note: The following excerpts are from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison&#39;s press conference Monday announcing an agreement to acquire PeopleSoft.
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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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BEA Systems countered Oracle Corp.'s bid for acquiring the company, proposing a price of $21 a share, $4 more than Oracle's initial offer.
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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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Oracle has agreed to buy BEA Systems for about $8.5 billion, the companies announced Wednesday.The deal comes just three months after&#160;the middleware vendor turned down an earlier offer of $6.7 billion.Oracle hopes that acquiring middleware vendor BEA will&#160;allow it to improve its own middleware suite, Fusion.That middleware is key to helping customers migrate their systems to a services-oriented architecture (SOA), CEO Larry Ellison said in a conference call last month to discuss the company&#39;s earnings.With Fusion already able to link to BEA&#39;s WebLogic Java application server, the deal is likely to speed Oracle&#39;s adoption of Java-based middleware, the company said.Oracle&#39;s customers have been telling it for years to buy BEA, it said.However the members of BEA&#39;s board were less sold on the idea: They&#160;turned down an offer from Oracle of $17 per BEA share in October, saying it &quot;significantly undervalues BEA.&quot; Oracle in turn&#160;dismissed the BEA board&#39;s counter-offer of $21 per share as &quot;impossibly high&quot;.But on Wednesday the companies split the difference, and BEA&#39;s board announced it had unanimously approved Oracle&#39;s latest offer of $19.375 in cash per BEA share.The board accepted only after spending several months looking for other ways to maximize shareholder value, BEA&#39;s chairman and CEO Alfred Chuang said in a statement.The companies expect to close the deal by mid-year, subject to the approval of regulators and BEA shareholders.&#160;
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Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison testified yesterday that the business software maker is leaning toward lowering its $7.7 billion bid for rival PeopleSoft