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Oracle Corp. [ORCL] said its $6.6 billion takeover offer for BEA Systems Inc. [BEAS] will expire on Sunday if the software company doesn't agree to a deal or put the bid to a shareholder vote. Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle issued a statement Tuesday saying it had delivered its ultimatum in a letter to the BEA board earlier in the day. The news sent BEA down 3.0% to $18.04 in early trading on the Nasdaq, but still above Oracle's $17 per share offer price. The proposed offer by Oracle, presented to the BEA board on Oct. 9 and made public on Oct. 12, represents a 25% premium to the company's stock price the day before Oracle disclosed the bid. But BEA quickly rebuffed the unsolicited cash offer, saying it significantly undervalued the middleware provider. BEA, however, did not slam the door on a potential deal. In its last letter to Oracle chief executive Charles Phillips, the company confirmed that a friendly deal is possible, but that BEA is "worth substantially more to Oracle" and others. "We did say, and we will repeat here, that we will not engage in any process that would be open-ended or harmful to our shareholders," Bill Klein, vice president of business planning and development, who is speaking for the BEA board, wrote to Oracle. BEA has also requested more information from Oracle about how it planned to proceed. But confusion over a supposed "agreed-upon meeting" between Phillips and Klein that never happened may have prompted Tuesday's letter to BEA's board. Phillips said BEA had again rejected the proposed deal and refused to meet with Oracle to discuss the offer. He called for a vote by BEA shareholders and said: "Oracle believes that our $17 per share price is generous and there are no offers for BEA above $17 per share." He added that Oracle "has no interest in a long, drawn-out process to acquire BEA." San Jose, Calif.-based BEA could face some pressure from billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who owns about 13.2% of the target's shares. Icahn has been pressing for a sale of the company for weeks. Icahn was reportedly pleased with Oracle's bid, but told The Wall Street Journal at the time that BEA should command a higher price. Speculation about an Oracle-BEA merger has circulated for years, but escalated earlier this month when Oracle's nemesis, Germany's SAP AG, bid $6.8 billion for France's Business Objects SA. BEA makes software that supports business activities such as billing, supply chain management and securities trading, by communicating between those programs and back-end systems like databases. Such business software has been in high demand as companies move more of their tasks onto the Web, but competition has held down prices.  Deal Video
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BEA's Project Genesis is run by unscrupulous thieves - BEA itself is the biggest thief of all. The recruiter (Vicki Mason) for this project called me for an Architect position because of my SaaS background. The VP (Guy Churchward) during the phone conversation wanted to know every detail about my previous employment in the SaaS company - mainly with regards to the SaaS market requirements and user experience + architecture. After having satisfied his knowledge he asked the recruiter to let me know that he does not see me as the right candidate. BEA is a Java company and my background is in .Net. Obviously they did not need my .Net skills which was very clear from my resume. They had called me just to obtain knowledge about SaaS. Clearly a case of serious Industrial Espionage.