Oracle on Friday announced a surprise $5.1 billion takeover bid for enterprise software maker PeopleSoft, only a few days after PeopleSoft said it was acquiring rival J.D. Edwards for $1.7 billion. PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway said the offer was 'atrocious' and a transparent attempt to disrupt PeopleSoft's acquisition of J.D. Edwards.

Read PeopleSoft calls Oracle bid 'atrocious'.

Wall Street on Oracle's PeopleSoft bid.

Does it mean that anybody can start a 'bid' process without a request from company ? Can someone explain me ?

If a company is publicly traded on a stock-exchange its pretty much up for grabs for anyone with enough money if the stock float is large enough on the market, wether the companys management wants it or not.

Not so fast .. that's precisely why many companies have the "poison pill" concept to thwart hostile takeovers.

Posion pills do not often work very well.

Often companies with a combination of some (not all) factors make good acquisition targets: depressed valuation (stock price), lots of cash on hand, little, or no debt.

That way, the purchase can be financed with the companies assets. For example, you could buy the company and pay of the financing with the cash, or issue debt.

A poison pill can take many shapes, but a common one (and what you are probably referring to) is a Shareholder Rights Plan. In a Rights Plan, the company issues convertible preferred shares to shareholders that are convertible to an equal or greater number than thos outstanding. This dilutes the raiders equity interest. This is a poison pill because it makes it more expensive to buy.

There are other types of poision triggers as well.

Let's think about it though: Who does this really protect or help? The shareholders are likely to benefit from an unsolicited tender offer because the stock price jumps immediately (PeopleSoft up 20% today).

This is often just a way for senior management to protect themselves and their positions. Poison pills often preempt legitimate takeover attempts that could truly benefit the shareholders.

Jason McKerr
Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering

To Jason's point, see today's CBS Marketwatch issue at http://netscape5.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7BA343F7B6%2D45E8%2D445D%2D83CA%2D35105E6A7A1A%7D&siteid=netscape

Given the circumstances, I doubt whether this is a genuine takeover offer. Rather, I think Larry was angry that one of his competitors stole him some media attention, so he just fired out an inadequate, quickly stitched-together offer to ruin the PeopleSoft-JDEdwards marriage party.

Or does anybody here believe that the corporate cultures of Oracle (=sharkpond) and PeopleSoft (=NOT sharkpond) could be merged?

Best regards,
    Henrik Klagges
    TNGtech

I think it's just getting rid of competitor. I.e. they buy it, and in a year's time all PS installations will be replaced by Oracle.
Regards,
Vlad

Its hard to belive this is a genuine offer.

I guess, Oracle (and its ever fire brand CEO), wants to disrupt PeopleSoft takeover of J.D.E.(for some reason).

Bigs are eating the smalls IBM -> Rational
                           PeopleSoft -> JDEdwards
                           Oracle -> PaopleSoft
                           IBM/HP -> SUN

In this fiery market IBM always looked like a soft/mellow company without any aggression. They have positioned nicely in middleware market with WEBSPHERE/MQ/DB2 combination. With the strength of price waterhouse and IBM consulting behind them time for IBM to takeover peoplesoft. Among the bidders it is IBM/PeopleSoft combination is a win/win situation. IBM has the money to do it and the technology to handle it and determination to proceed with it.

Go peoplesoft at ibm dot com.
(Opinions are my personal)

Oracle is one step ahead in the corporate politics game .
Dont forget what they did last summer to stupid Governer Davis of california ...

Your astonishment is quite natural. Every company engages some tactics in ony way or another. It's dog eat dog world.

There is nothing holy about a company. Or a language/platform they evangelize for that matter.

Cheers,
Elango

Sold some 200,000 license of oracle - 1 per employee. Oracle is really bad in marketing & sales .. absolutely no Ethics .. I had a meeting with a sales guy and he reduced his price by almost 25% in a 20 mintes just to get our business and after the deal cheated us in a fine print 100 page contract by reducing the support from 3 year to 2 year. Make sure u deal with ORCL with caution

I deal with ORCL,IBM,MSFT and HP and don't see a big difference with sales tactics used by them . You idea that ORCL is the "bad boy" seems to me a little bit childish.

Regards,
Alex