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PeopleSoft Goes To Oracle
codecool writes "It is final. Peoplesoft's Board of directors finally relented and agreed to let Oracle have them for $26.50 per share. Finally, it all comes to an end." Closing date is set for mid-January timeframe.
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A horizontal merger is one in which both companies compete for the same market. For instance, if MS were to buy out Oracle's database platform and services, that would be a horizontal merger, since MS already has SQL Server.
:)
A vertical merger is one in which, for instance, one company uses a product of the other company in order to build and sell their own product. An example of this would be if a cellular service provider were to buy a cell phone manufacturer. (I don't know of any real-world instances of this; it's only a theoretical example.)
Hope that helps
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
That's simply not true. I have been intimately involved with the PeopleSoft/Oracle bid, and I can tell you had PeopleSoft not put the customer protection plan in place, it's sales would have collapsed following the bid.
When Oracle first announced it was to acquire PeopleSoft, it said it would close it down. Big corporate customers literally could not buy PeopleSoft software with the sword of "no support" hanging over them. With the product roadmap taken away, they delayed purchasing or went to SAP.
PeopleSoft was left with a dilemma, offer some reassurance to customers who wanted to buy its software or watch sales wither. (In which case, Oracle would probably have withdrawn its bid having seen a competitor's sales collapse.)
We may not like the way PeopleSoft tried to evade Oracle's clutches, but - as far as customer assurance went - it really had no choice, either for its shareholders or its customers.
Disclaimer: up until August '04, I was a stock analyst advising fund managers on the software industry.
--- My dad's political betting