Word: ellisons
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...tech industry in which news seems to trudge to the same dreary drumbeat--a relentless sales downturn, profits stagnant at best, venture capitalists with their wallets shut tight--at least Larry Ellison can still come up with a surprise. The founder of Oracle--one of the world's richest men, with company stock worth more than $17 billion--spent last week pushing a hostile bid to take over rival business-software firm PeopleSoft for a lowball price of $16 a share--about 50¢ less than the market value of the stock. Neither analysts nor competitors seemed sure whether to take...
...employees of PeopleSoft, based in Pleasanton, Calif., were not amused. CEO Craig Conway, 48, himself a former Ellison protege, had just successfully negotiated a $1.7 billion merger deal with another rival, Denver-based J.D. Edwards. That was supposed to be the big story in the software business. Then Conway's customers started talking about the Oracle offer and whether they should postpone purchases until things settled down. Even after the PeopleSoft board concluded there would be antitrust problems with an Oracle takeover, Ellison was still pressing the deal on PeopleSoft shareholders. By the end of the week, PeopleSoft...
...Ellison? The Oracle chief, 58, can't deny he's having fun. "I love flying planes and racing boats," he says. "This is more challenging." But at the same time, he insists, he is deadly earnest about PeopleSoft--and adds that other similar offers may be on the way. "The industry went a little mad over information technology; now we have to adjust," Ellison says. "Companies are going to get gobbled up, absolutely...
Even assuming PeopleSoft fends off his offer, Ellison may yet have the last laugh. This is the era of consolidation in computerland. Companies like IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo and USA Interactive have spent billions of dollars snapping up smaller competitors. Others, like Palm and Handspring, have tried to stave off the hungry advances of these giants by merging. Now it's the turn of Ellison's realm, the complex world of business software, to go through some serious cyclical slimming. The outcome will be crucial to owners of widely held tech stocks and people who use their products, which includes just...
...debate prompted Lowell House Masters Diana L. Eck and Dorothy A. Austin, and Senior Tutor John L. Ellison to send an e-mail asking all residents to be more considerate when posting to the list...