The Price Is Right for PeopleSoft

It's finally over. After 18 months of courtroom battles, boardroom machinations, and name-calling, Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) has its paws on PeopleSoft Inc. (Nasdaq: PSFT) for $10.3 billion (see Oracle Buys PeopleSoft).

The PeopleSoft board accepted the Oracle offer of $26.50 per share today, saying the deal is a substantial increase on the $21 offered by the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based firm back in October (see Oracle Extends Tender Offer Again).

Throughout this saga, the PeopleSoft board has sought to frustrate their Oracle counterparts in an effort to drive up the value of the deal. Last month PeopleSoft execs hit back at Oracles assault on its shareholders by arguing that the company was worth more than the previous top offer of $26. It seems their strategy has paid off (see PeopleSoft Comments on Oracle's Offer ).

Larry Ellison, however, has now got his hands on a much-prized vendor of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and nearly 13,000 PeopleSoft customers, as his company attempts to battle the Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) behemoth.

Ellison clearly wants to continue the upward momentum of his company’s software license business. In Oracle’s second-quarter results, which were originally scheduled for Thursday but were revealed today, the firm reported a 14 percent hike in new software license sales, up to $971 million. This was led by a 57 percent increase in new application sales (see Oracle Reports Q2).