Ballmer, IBM Surprised By Oracle-Sun Deal

Geon Lasli writes "Reporters caught up with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Moscow to get his take on Oracle's deal to buy Sun Microsystems for US$7.4 billion. Ballmer was at a loss for words: 'I need to think about it. I am very surprised.' According to a source, IBM hadn't given up on purchasing Sun and was blindsided by Oracle's move. I guess IBM must be regretting playing tough 2 weeks ago. Unknown to outsiders, Sun had probably found the Oracle lifeboat before they decided to pull the plug on the deal."

It speaks volumes that they were caught out...

[GPLDAN]

That Ballmer had no prepared spin is amazing.

There was an article published online several months ago explaining why Oracle and Sun were a good fit. All of Oracle's application server architecture is built around Java. J2EE rules the Oracle roost. Oracle will pull the plug on selling servers, they wanted Java and Solaris. Solaris gives them SIGNIFICANT leverage over Redhat when working deals for large installs of Oracle. They can bundle a complete solution, even down to the hardware and lock EVERYONE else out of big deals.

Lots of analysts saw this as a possible deal, and McNealy was extremely arrogant in walking away from IBM so you had to figure something was up.

Sounds like the brass at Microsoft is suffering brain drain of its own. I bet Schmidt over at Google already knew exactly what was going to happen.

Old and slow Ballmer.... old and slow...



...developers, developers, developers, developers.....ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re:counter offer?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

IBM thought they were being tough negotiators by walking away from a 6.85 Billion bid then Oracle upped it to 7.4 Billion.

Uh, no

[afabbro]

I guess IBM must be regretting

I don't think so, since they indicated that after deeper examination and further consideration, they weren't interested in Sun at any price [yahoo.com].

Re:counter offer?

[BrainInAJar]

No... "definitive agreement" means that bidding is done.

Oracle offered, Sun accepted.

Re:Ummmm

[rackserverdeals]

"all reports I've read in the press indicate that Oracle has been handling the mergers very well."

*cough*peoplesoft fiasco*cough*

I'm talking post merger. Merger might not be the right word in that case. It was pretty much a hostile takeover with Peoplesoft kicking and screaming as well as legal battles to get it done.

But a year after the Oracle Peoplesoft merger [cnet.com] things seemed to be going smoothly.

Even now, years later, while they've been working on consolidating the PeopleSoft and JD Edwards products, they haven't abandoned support for the legacy systems people are using.

Re:or not

[DragonWriter]

By buying Sun, Oracle also gets a hardware operation. But Oracle has no experience in the hardware business.

But Sun does. And, you know, all those people who work for Sun and constitute that experience are, when the deal is complete, Oracle employees, Oracle just needs to keep them and leverage their experience. This isn't entirely unheard of in acquisitions -- you acquire a firm that has experience you want, and then keep the people with the experience in a position to make use of it. Its not always just about acquiring an IP portfolio. Heck, sometimes its as much about acquiring the people and their experience as the IP portfolio. Two notable examples of this are acquisitions of Steve Jobs-run firms -- Apple's acquisition of NeXT and Disney's acquisition of Pixar.

Re:counter offer?

[Albanach]

No... "definitive agreement" means that bidding is done.

Doesn't it mean the boards have agreed the terms of sale?

Sun is a listed company. The shareholders own it, not the Board of Directors who approved this deal.

Unless they somehow managed to get agreement from 50.1% of shareholders before making the announcement (which I imagine would cause all sorts of SEC issues) it's still going to require shareholder approval, no? And, if the decision is still down to the shareholders, IBM could still return to the table, even if it required a hostile approach to the shareholders directly.

Re:or not

[eclectus]

By buying Sun, Oracle gets a bunch of software. But OpenSolaris, MySQL, Java, and OpenOffice were all already open-source. Well, nothing was stopping them from selling customers a setup that used MySQL, Java, and OpenOffice, even before they bought Sun. That's what IBM does already. You could argue that Oracle gets more control now over these things.

Not only that, but they don't have to reinvent the wheel with a support organization for those products. They just bought one. Sun Support has always been a money maker for Sun.

(Caveat: I work for Sun Support. I personally am looking forward to being Oracle. Much better than having to take the Blue Pill(TM) of IBM)

Re:OH yes..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hog's joke was a reference to the 640kb comment that is often attributed to Bill Gates.

640 * 1024 - 1 = 655360 - 1 = 655359

Re:I hate to be the grammar Nazi here...

[rackserverdeals]

Please tell me, that English is not your first language.

English is my first language (gee maybe second but it's very close I learned two at the same time). Slashdot isn't my first priority and I'm usually doing one or more other things while I'm typing. It's common for me to stop in the middle of a sentence then come back in mid thought which screws things up.

I type pretty fast but I still think faster than I type and that gets in the way too.

If I took the time to proofread, I'd spot the errors. But commenting on Slashdot, just isn't that important to me and I couldn't care less about the grammatical errors as long as the underlying message gets across.

Re:It's not that surprising

[EvilRyry]

I hate to break it to you, but Postgres is owned by its individual contributors. There is no copyright assignment as there is with MySQL. Additionally, its BSD licensed so anyone can do pretty much anything with it.

Re:counter offer?

[Albanach]

I think that's unlikely.

Nonetheless, here's what the SEC filing says:

(a) The Company shall establish a record date for, duly call, give notice of, convene and hold a meeting of its stockholders (the âoeStockholder Meetingâ) as promptly as practicable after the date hereof for the purpose of voting on the matters requiring Stockholder Approval; provided, that (i) the Company may delay, adjourn or postpone the date of the Stockholder Meeting if and to the extent necessary to obtain a quorum of its stockholders to take action at the Stockholder Meeting and the Company shall use its reasonable best efforts during any such delay, adjournment or postponement to obtain such a quorum as soon as practicable, and (ii) the Company may delay, adjourn or postpone the Stockholder Meeting if and to the extent (and only to the extent) the Company determines in good faith that such delay, adjournment or postponement is required by Applicable Law or to comply with any comments made by the SEC with respect to the Proxy Statement or otherwise. Unless the Company Board shall have effected an Adverse Recommendation Change in accordance with Section 6.03, the Company Board shall make the Board Recommendation and use its reasonable best efforts to obtain the Stockholder Approval, and the Company shall otherwise comply with all Applicable Laws applicable to the Stockholder Meeting. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, unless this Agreement is terminated in accordance with Section 8.01, the Company shall establish a record date for, call, give notice of, convene and hold the Stockholder Meeting and the matters constituting the Stockholder Approval shall be submitted to the Companyâ(TM)s stockholders at the Stockholder Meeting whether or not (A) an Adverse Recommendation Change shall have occurred or (B) any Acquisition Proposal or Superior Proposal shall have been publicly proposed or announced or otherwise submitted to the Company or any of its Representatives. Unless this Agreement is terminated in accordance with Section 8.01, the Company agrees that it shall not submit to the vote of the stockholders of the Company any Acquisition Proposal (whether or not a Superior Proposal) prior to the vote of the Companyâ(TM)s stockholders with respect to the Merger at the Stockholder Meeting. The notice of such Stockholder Meeting shall state that a resolution to approve and adopt this Agreement and the Merger will be considered at the Stockholder Meeting, and no other matters shall be considered or voted upon at the Stockholder Meeting without Parentâ(TM)s prior written consent.

I think it's pretty clear that Stockholder approval is required and therefore it is possible - however unlikely - for other offers to be made.

The SEC filing also contains specific clauses to deal with 'Superior Proposals'.

Re:Stupid Last Minute Bidders

[ThogScully]

There's a psychology that happens when a person bids on something, especially nearing the end when they've mentally committed to it and expect to win it. They will bid higher if they get outbid. That means that if I want to win something, I'm going to outbid him close to the closing time, or else that person may convince themselves to bid higher to prevent losing the item.

Relying on the maximum bid proxy to win things for you is a good way not to win things. You're assuming we're all rational robots who've determined a set maximum before even bidding once.
-N

Re:Oracle is now the new Apple

[Svartalf]

Big effin' deal.

Seriously.

Once you GPL/LGPL it, if people are interested in carrying it's development, it'll stay that way.

They're going to have a rough time putting that genie back in the bottle in the case of Java now.

Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about a CEO that is unplugged. You would think that Steve Ballmer had an army of minions at the ready to update the CEO at a moments notice when a GLOBAL market game change is made. I guess Microsoft is a bit slow on getting that information to the powers at be _or_ so obese that the buyout has no affect on them.
 
I think someone either 1) needs to wake up earlier in the day and get the market pulse before heading out the door to clients, 2) be introduced to modern day mobile gadgetry, or 3) BS his way through an answer as to not look behind the times.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:I still can't believe it...

[sleigher]

...and some of us have a wife AND a girlfriend.