SAP saga continues

Oracle Corporation clearly doesn’t want Retek to fall into the hands of its competitor SAP. Just yesterday, it raised its cash tender offer to purchase all of the outstanding shares of Retek to $11.25 per share.

Earlier in the week, SAP’s North American subsidiary, SAP America, increased its tender offer price for Retek to $11.00 per share, fighting off an earlier bid by competitor Oracle to take control of the company.

Oracle had already purchased 5.5 million shares of Retek common stock, representing nearly 10% of total shares outstanding.

“Customers have told us they want Oracle to buy Retek. Retek’s applications are built on Oracle’s technology platform. And Retek and Oracle share a vision of applications built using industry standards like Java, not proprietary programming languages like SAP’s ABAP,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, Retek provides an integrated retail application suite to more than 200 customers in more than 20 countries around the world. With 2004 annual revenue of $174.2 million and approximately 525 employees, Retek also has offices in Atlanta, London and Melbourne.