Former PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway has become
central to Oracle’s argument in favor of taking over
PeopleSoft .
During the company’s ongoing civil suit in Delaware,
the ousted executive defended himself against Oracle’s lawyers who
questioned Conway about his part in PeopleSoft’s Customer Assurance Program (CAP).
On the stand Wednesday, Conway justified his negative campaign against
Oracle, saying that his interests were to keep morale high among customers
and employees, according to observers in the courtroom.
Conway said he responded to the initial hostile takeover bid in June
2003 with a campaign that “vilified” Oracle and put them in a bad light,
when asked by Oracle attorney Michael Carroll.
“I have referred to Oracle as a sociopathic company,” he said, adding that
he was “very surprised” that his former boss would try to acquire his
company at the same time that PeopleSoft had announced intentions to
purchase J.D. Edwards.
“I believed that what we were doing was addressing what we thought was a
threat,” Conway said.
Oracle’s legal beef, however, is that PeopleSoft’s board did not get a
chance to review the CAP plan and that Conway kept tight control over the
board’s advisement attorneys and bankers. According to court documents,
there were more than $2 billion in CAP contracts as of June 30, 2004.
Symyx Technologies CEO Steven Goldby, who sits on the board of directors at PeopleSoft, apparently strengthened the argument Tuesday when he told the court
he was open to discussing a deal with Oracle, but that it would have to be for more than the current tender offer of $21 per share or $7.7 billion.
Representatives with both Oracle and PeopleSoft denied that the two
companies were currently in discussions to adjust the merger price.
Oracle’s suit claims the customer refund guarantee and subsequent “poison pill” are unlawful because Conway misled investors about it and allegedly sheltered his own board into believing that there would be
nothing Oracle could do to acquire PeopleSoft.
This was Conway’s first appearance since PeopleSoft’s board of directors fired him last week,
replacing him with Founder and Chairman Dave Duffield.
As previously reported,
Ellison and Conway had four separate interactions
that may have led to a merger between Oracle and PeopleSoft. During the government’s
antitrust suit to block the hostile bid, which was dismissed last month, Ellison recounted that he and Conway differed on which one of them would run the operations of
PeopleSoft as a division within Oracle.
Public opinion of an Oracle-PeopleSoft merger may also be shifting.
Philip Fersht, Yankee Group Director and market analyst, told
internetnews.com that PeopleSoft customers he’s talked with are
becoming less concerned about the takeover.
“On the whole, enterprises do not see Oracle as damaging the PeopleSoft
product, and are more likely to invest in and develop its functionality
further,” Fersht said. “A customer assurance program will further strengthen
reassurances that the PeopleSoft apps will continue to be supported
effectively. The bigger issue is how Oracle will deal with IBM underpinning
the apps with WebSphere, but that’s the name of the game these days —
working with competitive middleware solutions to deliver optimum
functionality in a service-oriented fashion. Also, enterprises don’t tend to
change their middleware for the sake of it.”
Before he was let go, Conway inked a five-year
distribution deal that embeds IBM’s WebSphere software in
all PeopleSoft products.
Yankee’s Fersht said customers don’t really have to worry too much about
the impact until 2005, but that they should prepare for a closer integration
between IBM’s middleware and PeopleSoft applications.
That shouldn’t be too much of an issue, given that IBM’s products are
based on Java and Web services standards — two things Oracle has also
aligned its products behind. And even without Oracle standing in the middle,
existing PeopleSoft customers should still be able to plug in middleware
products from other infrastructure software providers, such as TIBCO and BEA.
Even if it manages to remove PeopleSoft’s CAP and poison pill during the
civil suit trial, Oracle still may have its takeover plans stringently
scrutinized by European regulators.
EC antitrust chief Mario Monti said Wednesday that a review of the
competition concerns was on hold for now because it is still awaiting
information from Oracle.
“We expect that Oracle will very shortly provide the information still
pending and that, therefore, the commission will be able to restart the
clock in coming days,” Monti said at a press conference in Washington. “This
should make it possible for the commission to take a final decision on this
case before the end of October.”
