Office applications Toolkit

PeopleSoft mops up J.D. Edwards shares

Martin LaMonica CNET News.com

Published: 01 Sep 2003 09:35 BST

Business software maker PeopleSoft announced Friday that it has purchased all the remaining shares of J.D. Edwards.

PeopleSoft said it bought about 105 million shares of J.D. Edwards when it acquired the company on 18 July. PeopleSoft will pay $7.05 (£4.46) in cash and 0.43 of a share for each remaining J.D. Edwards share that was not tendered in July.

PeopleSoft chief executive Craig Conway expressed confidence that the merger will be successful.

"Over the last month, we have moved rapidly to integrate the two companies," Conway said in a statement. "I am more confident than ever that this combination will result in enhanced value for shareholders."

The combined companies will catapult PeopleSoft past Oracle to take the No. 2 spot among business application providers, behind SAP. PeopleSoft announced its plans to acquire smaller business software maker J.D. Edwards in June.

The two companies accelerated their merger process in an attempt to thwart a hostile takeover bid from Oracle. However, Oracle's offer to purchase PeopleSoft -- even after its acquisition of J.D. Edwards -- still stands.

In an interview with CNET News.com, Conway said that Oracle's hoped-for acquisition of PeopleSoft has, in practice, failed. But Oracle executives have made it clear that they will continue pursuing their goal to buy PeopleSoft, even if it takes several months or a year.

Did you find this article useful?
42 out of 74 people found this useful

More In Office applications

Company/Topic Alerts

Create a new alert from the list below:

Related Jobs

Managing Consultant - Financial Services

EDS value proposition, and determining solution or offering that best fits clients needs - Work within geographically dispersed teams, securing ...

Business Analyst - Insurance London Markets

The role has a particular emphasis on content management and data share analysis and separation reviewing of file/data shares). Huxley Associates are ...

Inside Sales Representative

Inside Sales Representative Success in this role requires strong acquisition and development skills to convert accounts to Dell and to achieve ...

Featured Talkback

Why do so many (virtually all) software packages think that they are so important that they have to be started automatically every time the computer boots? What is the largest number of "speed access", "update check", "camera download" and whatever other background programs you have ever seen running? Of those, how many did you really need?