Ellison On Oracle’s Takeover Targets
July 4th, 2004 by Mark Rittman
"Whether or not Oracle wins its hostile takeover of
PeopleSoft, one thing is for sure: Larry Ellison is acquisition
hungry."
reports Michael Singer for InternetNews.com. "But the motivation for
doing so may not be to battle top-tier market leader SAP, but rather to take
away mid-market business from Microsoft and IBM, according to analysts surveyed
by internetnews.com. In a video deposition Monday, the CEO said he considered as
many as eight different acquisition targets, including Siebel, BEA, Systems,
Business Objects, Lausanne Software, Corner Corp, SunGuard SCT, Documentum
(eventually acquired by EMC) and J.D. Edwards (acquired by PeopleSoft) …
Dominy [director of Enterprise Services at research firm Yankee Group]
said there have been rumors that Oracle is exploring acquisitions in the
consulting and systems integration space. "This strategy would also help Oracle
match up better with IBM"
More from Laurie J. Flynn
at CRMBuyer: "Lawrence Ellison, chief executive of Oracle, testified at
his company’s antitrust trial that Microsoft’s strategy of driving down prices
was a crucial reason Oracle had moved to take over PeopleSoft. Ellison also said that Oracle was continuing to consider three or four other
acquisitions, even with its bid for PeopleSoft still pending. He declined to
name the companies but said they were all publicly traded and included a
business applications company, a company involved in "business intelligence"
[my emphasis] and a software infrastructure provider. In a taped
deposition last week, Ellison listed BEA Systems, Siebel Systems and Lawson
Software as past takeover candidates."
