In BEA Bid, Oracle Goes Bank-Less

pitch (PERSUASION) Show phonetics
noun [C]
1 a speech or act which attempts to persuade someone to buy or do something:
The man in the shop gave me his (sales) pitch about quality and reliability.
She made a pitch for the job but she didn't get it.
[+ to infinitive] The city made a pitch to stage the Olympics.

2 UK a place in a public area where a person regularly sells goods or performs:
The flower seller was at his usual pitch outside the station.

pitch
verb [I or T] MAINLY US
to try to persuade someone to do something:
She pitched her idea to me over a business lunch.
They are pitching for business at the moment.

In BEA Bid, Oracle Goes Bank-Less

October 15, 2007, 11:24 am

Lawrence Ellison’s phone is burning up these days. Who’s calling? Technology bankers, hoping for a piece of his latest deal.

Oracle, the software giant Mr. Ellison founded and now leads, made an unsolicited $6.7 billion takeover offer for BEA Systems last week. In what may be seen as a snub to Wall Street, it chose not to hire an outside investment bank to advise in the effort, instead putting Oracle’s chief financial officer and co-president, Safra Catz, a former banker from Donald Lufkin Jenrette, in charge of the deal.

But the acquisition has hit resistance from BEA Systems, which said last week that Oracle’s $17-per-share offer is too low. The chilly response from BEA, which is being advised by Goldman Sachs and Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, had some investors and analysts bracing for a potential bidding war.

Sensing that Oracle may need some additional advisory fire-power, investment banks are now clamoring for a role in the deal.

Ms. Catz has been at Oracle since 1999 and was a major architect of its contentious — but ultimately successful — effort to buy PeopleSoft. In a 2004 profile, the San Jose Mercury News called Ms. Catz “one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley.” (The article also said that Ms. Catz and Mr. Ellison dated each other “at one point,” according to two biographies of Mr. Ellison and interviews with former Oracle employees.)

Which bank might win a spot in the BEA deal?

The top contender is probably Credit Suisse. A team including Credit Suisse’s Joseph Reece advised Oracle in the PeopleSoft saga, and Credit Suisse advised Oracle in this year’s $3.3 billion acquisition of Hyperion Solutions.

Other possible candidates are Citigroup or Morgan Stanley. Charles Phillips, another of Oracle’s co-presidents along with Ms. Catz, is a former analyst from Morgan Stanley and now sits on Morgan Stanley’s board of directors.

Morgan Stanley was recently on the other side of the table from Oracle: It advised Hyperion in the Oracle deal, which closed in April.