Shareholders overwhelmingly approved the $5.58bn takeover at a special Webcast meeting yesterday. Around 99% of shareholders votes cast were in favor of the deal — representing around 67% of the Siebel’s 538 million outstanding shares.
The merger will give Redwood Shores, California-based Oracle a larger share of the CRM market, an area in which it has been lacking up to now. Importantly, it also the firm the lion’s share of a rapidly consolidating enterprise business applications market. After snapping up JD Edwards & Co and PeopleSoft Inc, Oracle’s only real rival in this space is SAP AG and to some extent Microsoft in the SMB market at least.
Overall has spent around $19bn buying up software rivals over the past couple of years.
After more or less inventing the market for CRM, San Mateo, California-based Siebel has seen its dominance in the market whittled away by rivals like SAP and smaller, nimbler competitors like salesforce.com Inc, both of which have made successful inroads into its customer base.
Siebel was founded by Tom Siebel, who once worked with current Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Both are now known to be bitter enemies. Siebel stepped down as CEO in 2004 but remained on as chairman.
It’s been the professional experience of a lifetime to serve you all, he said as he closed yesterday’s 10 minute shareholder meeting, bringing a rather abrupt end to the company’s 11 years of existence.
It was all rather anti-climactic.
It was not immediately clear when Siebel’s shares will cease to trade.
