NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
Oracle’s acquisition of NetSuite to proceed as shareholders bless deal
Oracle Corp.’s acquisition is of NetSuite Inc. will proceed after the company announced Saturday that more than half of eligible NetSuite shareholders had backed the $9.3 billion deal.
The magic number for the deal was 50 percent approval. Some 21.8 million unaffiliated shares, or 53.2 percent of the total unaffiliated shares, approved the deal. Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison and related parties own 45 percent of NetSuite’s shares, and that chunk of shares wasn’t included in the 53 percent. About 62 million of total shares, or 76 percent of the total shares issued and outstanding, supported the acquisition.
As of Oct. 7, Oracle had only managed to obtain the support of around a quarter of the NetSuite shareholders they required for the deal to proceed, with shareholder T. Rowe Price Group Inc. arguing that the proposed deal undervalued the software-as-a-service vendor. Oracle later gave an ultimatum at the end of October of Nov. 4 for the deal to close, saying it was not willing to budge on its acquisition price.
The deal, first announced in July, was pitched by Oracle as a way to booster its cloud business. “Investors are pretty jazzed about Amazon Web Services,” SiliconANGLE Media Head of Research Peter Burris said at the time. By contrast, Oracle remains a bit player in cloud computing. “I don’t think it’s serendipitous that Oracle purchased NetSuite on the same day that AWS reported its growth numbers.”
Burris added that the NetSuite purchase makes sense for Oracle as acquisitions are still a key strategy for the company. “Oracle still has a sizable M&A team running around,” Burris said. “Institutionally, it remains a key feature of their strategic patterns.”
Oracle is set to absorb NetSuite into its cloud division to improve its ability to compete against AWS, Salesforce.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and other large cloud suppliers. Founded in 1998, NetSuite sells a range of cloud software services used to manage a business’s financials, operations and customer relations.
NetSuite delivered revenues of $741.1 million in 2015 with a net loss of $124.7 million. The company went public in 2007.
Oracle said it expected the deal to close Monday.
Image credit: thos003/Flickr/CC by 2.0
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