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PeopleSoft Inc. founder Dave Duffield choked back tears in December as he told his employees that the company had agreed to sell to Oracle Corp. after a bitter takeover battle. Now he is reaching out to those who got hit hardest by his team's failure to fend off the Oracle bid. Duffield is giving grants of up to $10,000 to ex-PeopleSoft workers who were laid off by Oracle and have had a difficult time finding work. The grants will be given through Safety Net, a fund that he endowed and that became operational Friday. "The shock we all felt late...

Oracle Corp. said that 90 percent of the job offers made to PeopleSoft Inc.'s employees have been accepted as of today. Oracle, which is holding an analyst meeting today in New York, had said it plans to retain 90 percent of PeopleSoft's software development and support teams to keep PeopleSoft customers happy after its $10.3 billion acquisition. In order to do that, it had to cut from its own ranks, Oracle senior vice president John Wookey said. He did not reveal the number of cuts from Oracle's end, but Oracle has said that combined it has laid off about 5,000...

Oracle Corp. could slash as many as 4,800 jobs today as part of its $10.3 billion takeover of PeopleSoft Inc., analysts said. Based on preliminary calculations -- and a bit of guesswork -- Wall Street analysts predict that Oracle will have to cut 2,000 to 4,800 positions to make the deal financially worthwhile, yet at the same time fulfill the commitments it has made to the Pleasanton software maker's customers. Most are expected to come from PeopleSoft's 11,225-employee base, but a substantial number of Oracle employees could also face the ax, sources in the software industry said. Though it may...

SAN MATEO, Calif. - Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple Computer Inc., was the highest-paid executive in the San Francisco Bay area in 2003, according to a new study. Jobs received a salary of only $1 in 2003, but he traded in almost all of his stock options for $74.8 million in restricted stock, according to an analysis of 400 publicly traded companies in the Bay Area by San Mateo-based Equilar, which tracks executive compensation.Other Bay Area CEOs in the top five included John Chambers of Cisco Systems Inc. ($47.7 million), Meg Whitman of eBay Inc. ($42.6 million), Stephen...

(12/09/04)—Oracle CEO Larry Ellison feels strongly about unified data hubs. In fact, he thinks the biggest terrorist attack in the United States could have been prevented if intelligence officials had been using a unified database from Oracle. “Had there been a hub … there would never have been a September 11,” Ellison said in his keynote speech at Oracle’s OpenWorld in San Francisco on Wednesday. “Mohammed Atta passed through international customs, saying he was on holiday, while the police in Broward County (Fla.) had an outstanding warrant for his arrest,” he continued. Ellison’s example of a “terrorist hub” was one...

SAN FRANCISCO - Ending 18 months of bad blood, Oracle Corp. raised its takeover bid for bitter rival PeopleSoft Inc. by 10 percent to seal a $10.3 billion deal that will create the world's second largest maker of business applications software. The agreement, announced Monday, caps a rancorous Silicon Valley feud marked by churlish exchanges between the companies' management teams and colorful courtroom battles. Redwood Shores-based Oracle brought an end to the hostilities by sweetening its all-cash offer to $26.50 per share, up from a $24 bid that PeopleSoft's board had rejected as inadequate. The final offer represents a...

SAN FRANCISCO - Ending 18 months of bad blood, Oracle Corp. raised its takeover bid for bitter rival PeopleSoft Inc. by 10 percent to seal a $10.3 billion deal that will create the world's second largest maker of business applications software. The agreement, announced Monday, caps a rancorous Silicon Valley feud marked by churlish exchanges between the companies' management teams and colorful courtroom battles. Redwood Shores-based Oracle brought an end to the hostilities by sweetening its all-cash offer to $26.50 per share, up from a $24 bid that PeopleSoft's board had rejected as inadequate. The final offer represents a 75...

My company is having a major problem with Peoplesoft and SP2 conpatability. Has anyone else had this problem? And if so, how did you work around it? Please help.

The deadline for shares to be tendered is midnight tonight NOVEMBER 19, 2004 - The California Employees' Retirement System (Calpers) is tendering its 1.5 million PeopleSoft Inc. shares to Oracle Corp., giving the hostile suitor a boost in the final days of its takeover bid. Calpers' board voted on Wednesday afternoon to tender the shares, said spokesman Brad Pacheco. "Generally speaking, we just felt it made economic sense and it was a fair price," he said of Calpers' decision and Oracle's bid for PeopleSoft. Oracle's final offer stands at $24 per share for all outstanding shares of its rival. That...

Oracle prevails in PeopleSoft tender Stage set for potential proxy battle in the spring LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) -- Oracle Corp. cleared a crucial hurdle Friday night in its $9.2 billion bid to take over PeopleSoft Inc., winning a clear majority of shares in its smaller rival following a direct appeal to investors. More than 60 percent of PeopleSoft (PSFT: news, chart, profile) shares were tendered in favor of the $24-per-share offer, Oracle (ORCL: news, chart, profile) said in a statement released less than an hour after the deadline for accepting the bid expired. In a letter to PeopleSoft seeking to...

TOO FUNNY for words...Arrogance (+ Ignorance) rewarded!! PLEASANTON, Calif. - In a surprise move, business software maker PeopleSoft Inc. fired CEO Craig Conway on Friday, divorcing itself from the feisty leader who engineered the company's dogged resistance to a $7.7 billion takeover bid by rival Oracle Corp. PeopleSoft's board replaced Conway with its chairman and founder David Duffield, who also is the largest shareholder. The board appointed chief financial officer Kevin Parker and Phil Wilmington, the company's top sales executive, as co-presidents. PeopleSoft's board dumped Conway in a meeting late Thursday night, Skip Battle, a company director, told analysts during...

<p>It was only a couple of years ago that Larry Ellison, the charismatic CEO of Oracle Corp., was urging the dogs of antitrust to chase down Bill Gates and Microsoft. How things have changed. Somewhere along the way, the pups got loose and turned on him. Now Oracle itself may wind up feeling the antitrust bite.</p>

LARRY ELLISON IS one of the richest men in the United States. But as an investor, I'm not jealous of the founder of Oracle (ORCL). Let me tell you why. I happen to live quite near him in a town in Silicon Valley, and almost every day I drive by the site of the astonishing new home he has spent the last several years building. On what is perhaps the most expensive residential acreage not just in California but in the world, he has built a 45-acre Japanese palace and installed himself as shogun. You can't drive by it without...

Bill Gates must be laughing his head off. Following a months-long investigation, the U.S. Justice Department on Thursday said that it would seek to block Oracle's hostile bid to acquire PeopleSoft, arguing that it would result in higher prices for technology, fewer choices and less innovation. Setting aside the question of whether Uncle Sam has a case or not, Gates surely must be savoring the moment as Larry Ellison, one of the handmaidens to the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, is finally being hoisted on his own petard. Ellison was one of the most outspoken figures in Silicon Valley...

Connecticut's attorney general got the market's attention when he announced his intention to file an antitrust suit against Oracle (ORCL) on Wednesday. But he'd better enjoy it while he can. Making the case stick won't be easy. "It sounds as though Connecticut's criticism is that, as a customer, the successor to his supplier is not as desirable as the one he has now. That's a fair concern for a customer to raise, but it's not an antitrust issue. It's a matter of contract rights," said Emmett Stanton, an antitrust specialist and partner in the Silicon Valley law firm of Fenwick...

Everyone in the room, from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello, was beaming at last week's announcement. The news was that Asia's largest computer consultant has become a deep-pocket partner of the University at Buffalo. Under an agreement signed Monday, Tata Consultancy Services of India will partner with local researchers and help transform their discoveries into money-making products. Products mean jobs, the strongly desired byproduct of Buffalo's $140 million Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics. But jobs where? Advocates say the Indian company's capital and business links will mean economic spin-off benefits in Western New York and abroad....

<p>PLEASANTON -- PeopleSoft Inc., whose software is used to process payroll and track inventory, will shift some consulting work to India to lower the costs of customizing programs for clients. Pleasanton-based PeopleSoft is working with Hexaware Technologies Ltd., an Indian consulting company, to open an office in Bangalore in June. Hexaware consultants will configure PeopleSoft programs for customers' specific needs, said Bill Henry, a PeopleSoft vice president of strategy and marketing.</p>

NEW YORK (AFP) - Software giant Oracle announced a 5.1 billion dollar hostile takeover offer for business software maker PeopleSoft, offering a six percent premium to PeopleSoft's current share price. Oracle said would support PeopleSoft's previously announced acquisition of rival software maker J.D. Edwards for 1.7 billion dollars.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oracle Corp., the world's No. 2 software maker, said on Friday it offered to buy rival PeopleSoft Inc. for $5.1 billion, a move designed to bolster its flagging position in business software programs. The deal signals the growing readiness by software executives to consolidate the struggling sector as corporate spending on technology has waned amid the slumping economy. Oracle said it would bypass management and go directly to shareholders on Monday with a cash offer of $16 a share, a 6 percent premium over PeopleSoft's closing price of $15.11 in Thursday's Nasdaq trading. PeopleSoft shares rose...

<p>In blistering remarks at a hearing Thursday, lawmakers accused the California State University system of operating in a "culture of corruption" and said they would work to temporarily halt further spending on the university's controversial $662 million computer system.</p> <p>Members of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee said recent audit findings on the computer system showed that CSU couldn't be trusted to make decisions in the best interests of students. They also told CSU officials that more state oversight is necessary on the system's future expenditures of taxpayer dollars.</p>