BEA Systems’ (BEAS) Mad (As In “Insane”) Board

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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BEA Systems (BEAS) has a firm $17 a share offer from Oracle (ORCL). The company thinks it could get more, and, so did the market. The stock moved above $18 on news of the offer. BEA has Carl Icahn breathing down its neck to sell the company.

Oracle has give BEA a Sunday deadline to accept a deal. BEA’s board say "no dice". It can do better. But, with Goldman Sachs as its banker, it has not done better. Other possible buyers like IBM (IBM) and SAP (SAP) have not stepped up.

The BEA board is playing with fire. If the company had shown that it was worth well above $17, it would be one matter. But, the stock has not traded at that level since 2002. Assuming the markets are efficient in valuing companies, especially over long periods of time, the Oracle offer is on the high side of fair.

The board needs to wise up. That is not a white knight on the distant horizon. It’s only a mirage.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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