Oracle tape tells of acquisition targets

A videotaped deposition of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison played during the U.S. Justice Department's ongoing antitrust trail against Oracle over its proposed acquisition of PeopleSoft has revealed that Oracle drew up a list of a number of acquisition targets other than PeopleSoft.

During the trial, a document was also reference which listed the companies the Oracle board discussed as potential acquisition targets in April last year. The companies were BEA, Business Objects, Cerner, Documentum, J.D.Edwards, Lawson, PeopleSoft, SCT and Sybase.

It is interesting that J.D.Edwards is included on the list, as when J.D.Edwards was subsequently acquired by PeopleSoft last year, Oracle's opinion at the time that it would rather acquire PeopleSoft without J.D.Edwards seemed to indicate that it did not really value the company.

Ellison also claimed that Tom Siebel had visited Ellison at his home to try to sell him Siebel, a company which Ellison said Oracle would now consider buying should its bid for PeopleSoft end in failure.

Though in his deposition, Ellison left no-one in any doubt that Siebel would definitely be considered a consolation prize compared to PeopleSoft.

"We think (PeopleSoft has) a good engineering team. They have got a large customer base, a larger and more important customer base than our second choice, which would be Siebel."

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