Advertisment

Oracle offers to buy 20 pct more of India''s i-flex

author-image
CIOL Bureau
New Update

MUMBAI: Oracle Corp., the world's biggest maker of database software, on Wednesday offered to pay up to $531 million to lift its stake in its majority-owned Indian software developer, i-flex solutions Ltd..

Advertisment

In a letter to the stock exchange, the California-based firm offered to buy 16.629 million shares, or 20 percent of the banking software provider, at 1,475 rupees a share, the letter said. The offer would be open between Nov. 6 and 25.

If Oracle secured the 20 percent stake, it would boost the firm's holding in i-flex to about 75 percent.

The offer price represented a 3.1 percent premium to i-flex's closing price on Tuesday of 1,430.85 rupees. At 0605 GMT, i-flex shares were up 1.1 percent at 1,447 rupees.

An i-flex official told Reuters that Oracle's offer was triggered by regulatory requirements that if a group or individual buys more than 5 percent of a company in a year, it should offer to buy 20 percent more from minority holders.

Oracle's stake in i-flex has recently risen to about 55 percent, from 47.7 percent at the end of March 2006, due to secondary market purchases and a new share sale by i-flex.

tech-news