BEA blew it! And Alfred Chuang, the CEO (pictured), knows it. And it has nothing to do with BEA's perceived "under" value, because at $17 a share that's already a 40-50% premium over its price before "shareholder activist" [more on that later!] Carl Icahn started buying shares in late August!
But this has all to do about EGOs... on both sides. By accepting his arch-rival cash offer, Chuang could have increased his stock holdings by more than $700 million! Too late now! So what's going to happen?
At a recent Churchill Club event on M&A, Cisco VP of corporate development Ned Hooper and Silver Lake Partners co-founder Dave Roux, both experts in anything M&A, agreed that BEA is already over valued and that they won't be any other bidders/white knights/etc especially at $21/share. So now, everyone is waiting for BEA's financial results on Nov 15th. If BEA sales does well despite Oracle scaring tactics, Chuang wins: he won't have to listen to Icahn et al and continues with business as usual. If not, Oracle might be able to grab BEA for a lot cheaper! The funny thing is that in both cases, Icahn looses his shirt... unless someone is crazy enough to buy BEA at $21/share... and there are a lot of crazy people in Silicon Valley :-)