BEA has told its employees not to blog about the software maker's impending merger with Oracle. For the record, we stand with BEA management on this one. BEA employees, why go through the trouble of blogging when you can just send us tips and let us take care of it for you? [Docu-Drama]
Oracle vs. BEA — the 9-word version
As we've chronicled, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has conducted a war of words with BEA in his protracted takeover fight, threatening to pull his $17-a-share bid or make a lower offer. BEA's board also said it would accept nothing lower than $21 a share. In the end, BEA sold for $19.375 a share. The Wall Street Journal's …
Oracle and Sun attack the stack
Oracle has acquired BEA for $8.5 billion. Sun has acquired MySQL for $1 billion. These events are not coincidence. Oracle, which already makes a database, wants to add BEA's software on top of that database. Sun, which makes application servers and other software which connects to databases, wants to slip MySQL in…
BEA Systems will share financials and other internal data with shareholder Carl Icahn in an attempt to convince him that BEA is worth more than the $17 per share that Oracle had offered in an unsolicited takeover bid. BEA has not filed a quarterly report with the SEC in over a year because of an investigation into…
Oracle waits for BEA's self-esteem to deflate
Analysts believe that Oracle will still buy BEA ... eventually. However, since no "white knights" have stepped forward to make competing offers, the consensus is that the $17 offer Oracle initially made was too high a price. Carl Icahn, who owns 15 percent of BEA, wrote "I view your public declaration of a…
Oracle has responded to yesterday's statement from BEA Systems that it was worth $21 per share. Larry Ellison's software empire had previously offered $17 per share in an unsolicited takeover bid. Oracle says $21 is an "impossibly high price" and "nobody would seriously consider paying that." Well, we saw that coming
BEA Systems wants at least $21 a share from Oracle — or anyone else who wants to buy them. That's a mere $4 per share more than Larry Ellison offered. Don't expect Ellison to just say "OK" to this. That would make him look weak and easily manipulated. And it was probably a bad move, since it essentially set a…
Larry Ellison is not used to getting rejected. After being spurned twice by BEA's board, Oracle is now threatening to withdraw its $17-a-share offer for the software maker on Sunday. The stock, however, is still trading above $17. Translation? Wall Street thinks Ellison is bluffing. [Tech trader Daily]
How Oracle trashes the companies it buys
A cautionary tale for BEA, the software company Larry Ellison is trying to add to his Oracle-housed collection: When Oracle's integration teams sweep through, they obliterate all traces of the prior company. Take, for example, Siebel, the sales-management software company Oracle gobbled up in 2005. Writes a tipster:
What do you get when you combine ORCL and BEA?
Using the ticker symbols for Oracle and BEA Systems, a software company Oracle is trying to buy, as Scrabble pieces, venture capitalist Paul Kedrosky manages to spell "corbel," "cabler," and, well, "oracle." But we have a better use for "BEA" and "ORCL" — a new name for the merged companies which summarizes their…
Larry Ellison seeks BEA to add to software collection
I'm beginning to think that tech mogul Larry Ellison collects software companies the way he buys car, yachts, and tracts of land: Not because he needs another one, but just because he wants to have more. His devilish $6.66 billion offer for BEA Systems is right in character. For years, BEA has been mentioned as an…
A tale of two conferences
CONFONZ — Last week saw two ubernerdy conferences for customers of two big software companies in San Francisco. BEA's conference at Moscone West was completely fucking empty. There were a handful of people on each floor, all looking around wondering why there was no one nearby with which to press the flesh. VMware's…
Jon Bon Jovi Won't Play BEA
Very bad news! Fans of Jon Bon Jovi will have to wait "indefinitely" to read the "never-before-told stories of Jon's experiences as a screen actor, as well as insights into his commitment to social and political causes; and behind-the-scenes descriptions of the songwriting sessions that gave birth to some of the…
ConFonz at BEA World: Warning: obscene muppet reference
ConFonz returns with yet another conference report. This time he reports from the BEA Systems enterprise software conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center.
