Oracle Corp. announced late Friday evening that it extended its offer to acquire PeopleSoft Inc. to midnight Eastern time on Friday, Sept. 19.
The offer still stands at $19.50 per share.
The hostile takeover bid was initially set to expire this Friday, August 15, at midnight Eastern.
Oracle, of Redwood Shores, Calif. initially launched the bid at rival PeopleSoft in early June, days after it announced plans to acquire mid-tier enterprise resource planning software maker J.D. Edwards & Co.
When that transaction was realized in mid-July, leapfrogging PeopleSoft ahead of Oracle in the ERP software market, it was presumed that Oracle would take one of a few options: extend its tender offer beyond PeopleSofts deadline to acquire the outstanding shares of J.D. Edwards; raise its tender offer to reflect PeopleSofts acquisition of JDE; or drop the bid altogether.
“We are extending our offer for PeopleSoft and we remain fully committed to acquiring PeopleSoft,” said Jim Finn, Oracle spokesman, in a statement.
Currently, PeopleSoft shareholders have tendered a total of 37,708,208 shares to Oracle.
PeopleSoft, for its part, had acquired about 110 million shares, or 88 percent of the outstanding JDE shares. It expects to acquire the remaining shares by the end of August.
