Corporate raiders, bids and acquisitions, flamboyant presidents racing around in fancy cars... It's not a movie, but almost like. I'm talking about the BEA story. For those who're following the Nasdaq, you know that there's been a private investor called Carl Icahn who has been steadily increasing his stake in BEA every day and pressurising BEA management to sell. BEA management didn't want to sell.
Matters came to a head yesterday with Oracle making an unsolicited proposal to BEA to buy it for $6.66 Billion (Headline: 666 is Carl's number) or $17 a share in an all-cash deal. BEA's shares shot up from 13.~ to 18.82 within hours and BEA rejected the initial offer. Icahn says we should receive higher bids from other companies like IBM, SAP, HP. Can he? That's the question. This activity has already pushed the Nasdaq higher and has ripple effects in the industry with everyone talking about consolidation. If you've seen the movie, "Wall Street", you get the picture. It's a little surreal and maybe unsettling to be in the middle of this maelstrom. Is this the start of a long bidding war? What will we find when we get to office on Monday? After going through "redeployment" at Intel, I can't help wondering what this will eventually mean to me, personally. Meanwhile, the story is exciting and fast-moving and can be caught real-time at http://investing.reuters.co.uk/stocks/Quote.aspx?symbol=BEAS.O or http://finance.yahoo.com/q/h?s=BEAS. It's the new corporate reality and it's about thinking liquid more than ever. Yahan-kal-kya-ho-kisne-jaana :) Sandhya
