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SAP agrees to buy Sunnyvale-based Ariba for $4.3 billion [San Jose Mercury News, Calif.](San Jose Mercury News (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 22--German software giant SAP on Tuesday announced a $4.3 billion deal to buy Sunnyvale-based Ariba, a software and information technology services company. SAP, the world's largest business-management software maker, said it has agreed to pay $45 per share for Ariba and that Ariba's board of directors has unanimously approved the transaction. The price represents a 20 percent premium over the closing price for Ariba's shares on Monday and a 19 percent premium over the average price for the past month. The deal is expected to be finalized in the third quarter this year. Ariba, which has about 2,600 employees and recorded about $444 million in sales in its 2011 annual report, is "the leader in cloud-based collaborative commerce applications," helping companies conduct their business via the Internet, SAP said in a press release. "The cloud has profoundly changed the way people interact," said SAP Co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe in a joint statement. "The addition of Ariba will create the business network of the future, deliver immediate value to our customers and provide another solid engine for driving SAP's growth in the cloud." The combination of SAP and Ariba is expected to put competitive pressure on Redwood-City based Oracle (ORCL), which already competes heavily with SAP in software and is trying to expand it's cloud-oriented products. Contact Steve Johnson at [email protected] or 408-920-5043 ___ (c)2012 the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) Visit the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) at www.mercurynews.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |