Oracle purchase of BEA Systems stalls on price

Oracle issued a press statement on October 12 explaining that it was proposing to buy the company for $17.00 per share in cash – at the time, a decent premium over the then $13.62. But the revelation sent BEA’s stock shooting up to $18, and Oracle seems to have received fairly terse treatment from the BEA board ever since. Oracle’s original offer values BEA at $6.66 billion, but, given the giant’s history of bid raising, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see it raise its bid. Given the fray, SAP was initially rumoured to be considering a counter offer, but that company has now flatly denied any interest. Although the outcome remains uncertain, the likelihood is that BEA will be purchased – and probably by Oracle. That will put to bed issues evidently being felt at BEA due primarily to competition from Oracle itself, as well as IBM and Microsoft, as well as open source software. It will also be another feather in Oracle’s very substantial software cap. Analysts agree that BEA has long been a takeover target, as its share price ha fallen back over the last couple of years, responding to the competitive landscape. They also agree that a purchase by Oracle would stabilise the middleware market t a three horse race with standards, to the overall benefit of the user community. BEA’s bedst known product is WebLogic, which competes more or less head on with Oracle’s Fusion middleware.