The business stories that matter, by Fortune's Colin Barr
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January 16, 2008, 7:44 am

BEA gets the best of Oracle

Oracle (ORCL) and BEA Systems (BEAS) have made up and tied the knot. On Wednesday, Oracle ended a months-long battle with BEA over terms of a buyout and said it would pay $19.38 a share in cash, or $8.5 billion, for BEA. That’s a 24 percent premium to Tuesday’s closing price. ”The addition of BEA products and technology will significantly enhance and extend Oracle’s Fusion middleware software suite,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison in a statement.

Of course, Ellison tried to steal BEA this summer with an offer at $17 a share - a deal that won the backing of big BEA shareholder Carl Icahn. BEA responded that it wanted to sell at $21, prompting Icahn to scoff that the company was simply pursuing “a management entrenchment tactic, not a negotiating technique.” That seemed like an odd comment at the time, given Icahn’s history of bullying executives at companies he takes a stake in. But now, with a deal closer to management’s $21 than Ellison’s original $17, it’s clear BEA chief Alfred Chuang managed to get shareholders a better deal - something Icahn surely applauds.

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Colin Barr covers business and finance for Fortune.com. Previously he was an editor at TheStreet.com and author of the weekly Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street column, and an editor at Dow Jones Newswires.
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