PeopleSoft customers believe Oracle deal is dead

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA – As Oracle and PeopleSoft continue wrangling in regulatory and legal venues over Oracle’s attempted hostile takeover of PeopleSoft, some customers attending this week’s PeopleSoft Connect said they’re inclined to believe Chief Executive Officer Craig Conway’s assurances that the proposed deal is dead.

“Frankly, I don’t think people want it to happen. We don’t want it to happen. I don’t think it will,” said David Womeldorf, chief technology officer of food service equipment parts supplier IMI Bevcore Solutions Inc., in Osseo, Minnesota.

Bevcore is a customer of both PeopleSoft and Oracle. The company uses Oracle’s database software. When Bevcore evaluated applications vendors, its choice came down to Oracle or PeopleSoft and the company selected PeopleSoft because of the breadth of its offerings and its better-designed thin-client interface, Womeldorf said.

“We chose PeopleSoft over Oracle two years ago, and we’d do the same thing today,” he said.

Oracle’s US$7.3 billion tender offer to PeopleSoft’s shareholders to take over the company remains in place, but the tenor of its campaign waned after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) extended its review of the proposed deal’s antitrust implications. Oracle executives have said they expect that review to conclude in November. If the DOJ greenlights the acquisition, Oracle intends to reignite its efforts to win the support of PeopleSoft’s shareholders.

Another obstacle Oracle faces is PeopleSoft’s “poison pill,” a provision in its bylaws that would allow it to thwart a takeover by diluting its shares and making an acquisition prohibitively expensive. Oracle is asking a Delaware court to force PeopleSoft to revoke or redeem the poison pill.

One customer at Connect said Conway’s comments at a breakout session about PeopleSoft’s anti-takeover provisions helped reassure him that the company will succeed in fending off Oracle.

“My CFO (chief financial officer) was really nervous — he was afraid Oracle would take them over and kill all the products,” said Andrew Ziegele, vice president of IT at Consolidated Container Co., in Atlanta, which relies on software acquired by PeopleSoft through its recent purchase of J.D. Edwards & Co.. “That’s part of why I’m here (at Connect).”

In his opening keynote, Conway proclaimed that “the saga is over,” and said Oracle had failed in its bid because of the support PeopleSoft’s customers offered the company, both verbally and by opening their wallets. PeopleSoft surprised analysts last quarter by meeting the financial expectations set for the company before Oracle announced its bid.

Napa County (California) Director of Information Services Ben Wilson said his department moved forward some planned PeopleSoft to help the company hit its targets last quarter.

“We figured, let’s move now and get the things we’ll need for the next year and a half,” he said.

Napa County executives fired off a letter to Oracle soon after it announced its takeover plans, criticizing the company’s behavior and intentions. Since then, several top Oracle executives have tried to reach Wilson to discuss Oracle’s plans for PeopleSoft, but Wilson said he’s not interested.

Bevcore’s Womeldorf said he’s hopeful the DOJ will block Oracle’s acquisition attempt. After being contacted by the DOJ, his company detailed to the agency its reasons for opposing the deal, Womeldorf said.

As the DOJ continues its assessment, Oracle and PeopleSoft are battling in California’s Alameda County Superior Court over a PeopleSoft lawsuit charging Oracle with fraud, libel, false advertising and tortuous interference. PeopleSoft’s court filings in the case are laced with internal e-mails from Oracle executives cheering the takeover bid’s detrimental effects on PeopleSoft — statements Oracle says are accurate but taken out of context. The next court hearing on the suit is scheduled for late October.