Oracle Buying "Almost Anything"
Ellison talks acquisitions, ...
By Joris Evers
IDG News Service, 07/10/03
Oracle executives Wednesday repeated that more takeovers could follow the company's bid for PeopleSoft. At the same time, mudslinging between Oracle and PeopleSoft continued, even though Oracle described itself as a "generally friendly" company.
"We'd be interested in buying almost anything," Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison said at a meeting with financial analysts at his company's Redwood Shores, Calif., headquarters.
That is if the price is right, and "almost anything" does have its exclusions, Ellison said. Oracle won't buy Ariba or CommerceOne, vendors of online marketplaces. Also, Oracle looked at buying Legato Systems, but didn't because it felt it could not win from Veritas in storage management software space, he said.
Data storage vendor EMC Tuesday announced a deal to buy Legato in a stock transaction valued at $1.3 billion.
Clues on where Oracle could strike came from Executive Vice Presidents Safra Catz and Chuck Phillips, who spoke to the analysts just before Ellison. Phillips two weeks ago hinted that Oracle may do some more shopping.
On the database side of its business, Oracle is interested in technologies that will help users reduce cost and fit with its strategy of getting more information into a database, while on the applications side Oracle wants to move further into verticals such as healthcare and retail, Catz said.
Also, there are new markets that Oracle would like to get into, said Phillips, without providing any more detail. Phillips was recruited to Oracle recently after years on Wall Street as an analyst covering enterprise software and is one of the main forces behind Oracle's bid for PeopleSoft.
"We generate a tremendous amount of cash and we have been using that cash to buy back our stock. We could have been using that money for acquisitions," Ellison said.
Oracle prefers friendly acquisitions whereby the takeover target agrees to be bought, instead of a prey resisting to be devoured, said Catz. "Our preference is to do something friendly, but friendliness was not going to be a possibility here. Out hopes are that all our deals are friendly," she said. Added Phillips: "We are generally friendly people."
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