Redwood Shores, Calif. - Verbalizing its intent to become the number-one CRM applications company, Oracle, announced that it agreed to buy Siebel Systems Inc., San Mateo, Calif., for $10.66 per share. The offer is valued at approximately $5.85 billion, or $3.61 billion net of Siebel's cash on hand of $2.24 billion.
"Siebel's 4,000 applications customers and 3,400,000 CRM users strengthen our number-one position in applications in North America and move us closer to the number one position in applications globally," said CEO Larry Ellison from Oracle's Redwood Shores headquarters.
"This is a customer driven event. Our joint customers have consistently recommended this transaction to both companies for over a year," said Oracle President Charles Phillips. "We will embrace Siebel's best-in-class CRM products and make the features of those products the centerpiece of our Project Fusion CRM."
Of the major segments of the enterprise applications business, CRM is the largest and fastest growing - estimated to be more than $8 billion in 2004 and expected to grow to $10 billion by 2009, according to IDC. Siebel's CRM and Oracle's enterprise applications and middleware share an architecture that embraces industry standards, and a significant majority of Siebel's implementations run on the Oracle database.
While the transaction and the timing are subject to regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close in early 2006.
Source: Siebel Systems Inc.
