Interesting day on Wall Street. BEA Systems said it would sell itself to Oracle or anyone else willing to pony up $21 a share, or about $8.2 billion. For the moment, investors are not taking the new asking price very seriously. Indeed, shares of BEAS actually lost a few cents of value following the early morning announcement. The Street’s logic is easy to follow. Before Oracle’s offer to buy the company, BEAS wa Interesting day on Wall Street. BEA Systems said it would sell itself to Oracle or anyone else willing to pony up $21 a share, or about $8.2 billion. For the moment, investors are not taking the new asking price very seriously. Indeed, shares of BEAS actually lost a few cents of value following the early morning announcement. The Street’s logic is easy to follow. Before Oracle’s offer to buy the company, BEAS was trading at $13.62 a share. Oracle offered $17 a share, a premium of nearly 25%. At $21, the premium jumps to 54%. Yikes! (Okay, the premium is a bit less when you factor in the $1 billion or so in cash BEAS has on hand, but it’s still might hefty.)Now, I can’t read Larry Ellison’s mind, and there are those, including analyst Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research, who thinks he’ll buy at the higher price. (Trip, by the way, has made some good calls on Oracle in the past.) Even so, if you were to buy shares at Thursday’s closing price of $17.53 and the stock goes to $21 a share, you make a rough profit of $3.47 a share. But if the deal falls through the stock will head south like a falling manhole cover, probably winding up at around $13. So you’d lose $4.53 a share. Some people might like those odds, but I don’t. And neither did many investors. Which is why BEAS end the day with a 2-cent loss instead of a big gain. There could well be a lot of back-stage maneuvering in the next few days, and anytime something leaks out the stock will react. Another point: I’m not sure BEA is serious. It could well be that the board of directors figured they could be opening themselves to a shareholder (as in Carl Ichan) lawsuit if they simply stonewalled Ellison’s bid. By throwing out a counter offer, their butts are well covered if Oracle walks. And if he goes for it, they make a ton of money. Talk about win win. The more significant story of the day, though, was the pair of strong quarterly reports issued by Microsoft and EMC, which helped calm tech investor nerves after Wednesday’s carnage on the NASDAQ. More about this later. I welcome your comments, tips and suggestions. Contact me at bill.snyder@sbcglobal.net Technology Industry