Oracle finishes $8.5 bn acquisition of BEA

REDWOOD SHORES, USA: Even as uncertainty is looming large over Microsoft’s unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo, business software major Oracle Corp has accomplished its largest acquisition as it completed its $8.5 billion takeover of rival BEA Systems Inc following green signal from European anti-trust regulators.

It was after applying much pressure on BEA for more than three months that both the parties were able to strike a deal with the help of billionaire private equity investor Carl Icahn, who owned about 11 per cent of BEA's stock.

Like in the case of Microsoft-Yahoo bid, BEA had also initially rejected Oracle's bid as too low, forcing Oracle to retreat and later it came up with a price agreeable to BEA.

The deal was struck at a higher premium than what Oracle initially offered. "The addition of BEA will accelerate innovation by bringing together two companies with a common vision of a modern service-oriented architecture infrastructure," said Charles Phillips, president, Oracle.

There are chances of job cuts as Oracle aims to maximize its profit from the BEA acquisition.