Oracle, Sweetening Terms, Buys BEA
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Just three months after BEA handily rejected its original unsolicited bid, Oracle said it would acquire BEA Systems for $8.5 billion.
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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 rejected as âimpossibly highâ BEAâs offer to be acquired for about $8.2 billion, just two weeks after BEA refused Oracleâs $6.7 billion offer for the company.
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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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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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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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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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As it cools its heels waiting for a response from BEA Systems, Oracle announces plan to buy the operational planning software maker.
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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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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&#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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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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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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Business software company Oracle Corp   said it agreed to buy Netsure Telecom Ltd, a maker of  network related software, for an undisclosed sum.
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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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Mixes with new crowd Oracle is ending its brief acquisition lull with one of its largest software deals. The database giant will buy Hyperion Solutions, also an Oracle competitor in the business intelligence market and an important partner of SAP, for $3.3bn, or $52 a share - a handsome 21 per cent premium for stockholders.â¦
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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.