Saturday, February 03, 2007

Rumor mill: Oracle to acquire SAP

Apparently, the investor community has been abuzz all this week with the idea that Oracle is about to launch a takeover bid for SAP. The gossip even comes with an offer price: 38.5 euros/share ($49.78). The whispers led to some see-sawing of SAP's stock price, though it ended the week lower than it started.

The speculation was fueled by SAP's disappointing financial results earlier this month, though the disappointment was with SAP's failure to meet its own aggressive plans, not with any fall off in its business. SAP's license sales are still growing: last year they rose by 11%.

So, I wouldn't put any credence in the story. Oracle had to fight hard enough to get its PeopleSoft acquisition past the antitrust division of the U.S. Justice department. A bid for SAP would give the combined entity more than 70% of the worldwide enterprise systems market, depending on how you define it. It wouldn't fly in U.S. courts, and it certainly wouldn't be approved in the EU.

Related posts
SAP license sales grow, but short of target
Rumor mill: Oracle looking at JDA/Manugistics?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Doesn't SAP have a majority shareholding in trust so these type of sell-outs can not happen without SAP Board approval? I suggest this would be highly unlikely.

I also think Oracles results are somewhat artificially inflated given recent acquisitions (Oracle seems to have trouble integrating these(They dropped Siebel reporting integration attempts as well!)

Oracle is buying market share, rather then growing it, but in IT this has a tendency to byte you. I can't see this one happening.