Oracle to Buy BEA for $19.375 a Share

Oracle (ORCL) Wednesday morning announced that it has agreed to buy BEA Systems (BEAS) for $19.375 a share. That comes to $8.5 billion, or $7.2 billion net of cash. The company said the deal should be accretive to earnings by at least 1-2 cents a share on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. The deal is expected to close in mid-2008.

The acquisition comes after months of haggling; Oracle had offered $17 a share; BEA had said publicly that it was worth at least $21. Apparently they more or less split the difference.

In a separate release this morning, investor Carl Icahn, who had been pushing BEA to sell itself, said the deal “is an excellent example of the great results that can be achieved for all constituencies when the shareholder activist is able to work cooperatively with management.” If he does say so himself.

One longer-term question: having acquired Siebel, Peoplesoft, Hyperion and now BEA, what is left for Oracle to buy? The market seems to think the correct answer might be Tibco (TIBX), which this morning is up 59 cents, or 8.7%, at $7.34. (Or maybe they think the BEA acquisition will trigger a scramble for middleware companies by (SAP), (IBM) or others.)

In pre-market trading, BEA is up $2.98, or 19.1%, to $18.56. Oracle is down 36 cents, or 1.7%, at $20.95.