Oak Investment Partners LLC announced Wednesday that it will not increase its bid to acquire Pivotal Corp., clearing the way for Chinadotcom Corp.s CDC Software Corp. to buy the CRM software developer.
Pivotal shareholders are due to vote Monday on Chinadotcoms bid for the company. That deal is valued at $2 per share in cash or $2.14 per share in cash and stock. Oaks bid was valued at up to $1.81 per share in cash.
Oak Investment Partners, a private equity firm based in Westport, Conn., which already has a stake in Pivotal, had planned to acquire the outstanding shares of Pivotal and merge the company with Talisma Corp., another of its portfolio companies. Chinadotcom was the last suitor for Pivotal, after Pivotal rival Onyx Software Corp. had offered an all-stock deal for Pivotal last month, just six days before Pivotal shareholders were due to vote on the original Oak bid, which was made in early October.
Earlier this week, a Special Committee of Pivotals board of directors threw its support behind the Chinadotcom deal, which it had originally rejected as being too conditional. Onyx then dropped its bid.
Chinadotcom intends to merge Pivotals software with CDCs enterprise resource planning and supply chain management applications.