Well after a long battle Oracle has finally taken over PeopleSoft. Will be interesting to see how this turns out. I must say I am very negative to mergers and corporate acqusistions of this size. The HP/Compaq merger is good example of how hard it is to combine two different corporate cultures, strategies and to achieve synergies and cost-cuttings from this. A motive can off course be ‘if you can’t beat them - buy them’. Bad for competition, customers and the remaining competitors.
Acquisitions of this type in the ERP/CRM market is by no means a surprise. It has been happening for a while (i.e. Microsoft overtake of Navision) and is very much expected to continune, in fact it’s required with the large number of players in the market and many of them with very poor financial results.
PeopleSoft, Inc. (Nasdaq: PSFT) today announced that following discussions throughout the weekend, the Board of Directors, based upon the recommendation of the Transaction Committee of independent directors, has approved a definitive merger agreement under which a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) will acquire all PeopleSoft shares for $26.50 per share in cash. The total value of the transaction is approximately $10.3 billion.
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PeopleSoft | PEOPLESOFT AGREES TODEFINITIVE MERGER AGREEMENT and Oracle buys PeopleSoft for $10 billion | CNET News.com