Oracle has made a near $7 billion cash bid for service oriented architecture vendor BEA Systems.
The offer for BEA was delivered in a letter to directors last week, in which Oracle proposed to pay $17.00 per share in cash, a 25% premium over yesterday's closing price of $13.62.
"We have made a serious proposal including a substantial premium for BEA," says Oracle president Charles Phillips. "We believe our all cash offer provides the best value for BEA's shareholders and the best home for BEA's employees and customers."
BEA is under pressure to sell from activist investor Carl Icahn, who holds a 13.2% stake in the company.
Oracle's unsolicited bid comes a week after German rival SAP moved to acquire Business Objects.
But Phillips says the proposal is the culmination of repeated conversations with BEA's management over the last several years.
"The acquisition of BEA by Oracle will enable an increase in engineering resources that will in-turn accelerate the development of our world-class suite of middleware," he states. "Both Oracle and BEA customers will benefit from this increase in engineering investment as they migrate to modern SOA technologies."