The Wall Street Journal presiente que existen posibilidades de que la operación se concrete:
Oracle Corp. made an unsolicited $6.66 billion offer for business-management software maker BEA Systems Inc., which has been under pressure from investor Carl Icahn to consider a sale of the company.
Several hours later, BEA issued a response saying the offer "significantly" undervalues the company, but stopped short of rejecting it outright.
Oracle's all-cash bid values BEA at $17 a share, a 25% premium to its closing price Thursday of $13.62. Shares quickly jumped above the offer price in trading Friday, amid speculation that the offer could trigger a bidding war for the San Jose company.
Mr. Icahn, for his part, said he is "certainly happy" about Oracle's bid. Mr. Icahn in recent weeks became the biggest shareholder in BEA, with a 13.22% stake as of Wednesday.
"It definitely should be taken over," Mr. Icahn said in an interview Friday, adding that BEA "would be a great fit with Oracle." He said, though, that he "would like to see it command a better price" and named SAP AG, International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. as other possible acquirers.
(...) Oracle's Mr. Ellison has been eyeing BEA for years, but Alfred Chuang, BEA's founder and CEO, has been firmly opposed to the idea of being acquired, arguing that his company could stay independent through internal research and development. The pressure from BEA shareholders to sell the company is evidence of a sea change in the technology industry that has now opened the door for an Oracle acquisition.
(...) BEA's stock has declined steadily over the past year. Before Mr. Icahn purchased his stake, the stock price was down 24% from its 52-week high last October, a drop that wiped out about $1.5 billion in shareholder wealth. Two months ago, the stock was trading at $11.25.
BEA shares haven't been above $17 since February 2002. The stock's high over the past five years was $16.77 in November.
BEA has been beating back speculation of a sale for some time. In September, Kevin Faulkner, BEA's head of investor relations, said the company had no intention of following Mr. Icahn's advice, saying BEA would get "buried inside a larger sales force."
La posible compra refuerza considerablemente la concentración de competidores en el mercado de ERP´s, a días de concretarse la compra de Business Objects por SAP. En palabras del Wall Street Journal: Four years ago, when Oracle made its PeopleSoft bid and divulged an interest in buying BEA, the move was seen as an audacious and risky one; big software acquisitions were still rare and prone to failure. But the industry has matured since then. That has made it increasingly difficult for smaller, independent players like BEA to compete against giants like Oracle and IBM.
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