Shares of the French-American software maker also peaked over 5% during midday trading on Nasdaq.
European analysts say the combination of its size, healthy product pipeline, and a diminishing integration risk from the acquisition of Crystal Decisions last year, makes Paris-based Business Objects an attractive target for larger enterprise software vendors seeking to add business intelligence (BI) capabilities to their portfolios.
Merger speculation peaked last week after PeopleSoft Inc sacked its CEO Craig Conway, a move which many believe paves the way forward for a proposed $7.7bn takeover by Oracle Corp.
One analyst at Europe-based Dexia Securities noted that Business Objects also appeared on Oracle’s hit-list of nine potential targets – which was made public this June as evidence presented in the recent Oracle-PeopleSoft antitrust suit in which US regulators lost out.
Now that the acquisition of PeopleSoft seems a done deal, we think that Oracle’s appetite won’t stop here, he said.
Many analysts believe that with more than $9bn in net cash Oracle is financially capable of executing a series of quick acquisitions to round out its product portfolio even more.
