I had to smile: I was following the „small war“ of SAP and Oracle around RETEK the last months and had to smile yesterday, when SAP´s CEO Kagernmann announced, „we don´t need Retek, we´ve got our own solutions“. Oracle, SAP´s biggest opponent in Enterprise Software and world´s No2 behind SAP, had just bought Retek (a niche Software developer for a small business-market but with excellent customers) vor 11,25$ per share after SAP announced their offer of 11$ per share in the last week. One has to know, that SAP once offered just 8$ per share some weeks ago and Oracle reacted with some cents more. So, why did SAP make this big step: offering first just 8$ and then 11$ per share. This seems for me a just too big step. If they´ve offered 8,75$ or 9 $ ok, but 11$? One additionally has to know, that Oracle had a good 2004 in it´s core business (solid growth in databases) but enterprise software didn´t grow too much, so that their only positive announcement for the shareholders was the acquiring of peoplesoft. So, was it tactics of SAP to raise their offer for RETEK, knowing that Oracle would go just higher? Oracle had to pay 640 million $, though Retek might be just 500 mio. $ worth (with a tot. revenue of about 170 mio. $ in 2004). I think so. SAP is able to build it´s own software, and might not be dependend on Retek. The winner are the RETEKS SHAREHOLDERS.
