[via BusinessWeek]

It is just me or I have a problem today to understand these acquisition-deals?

Oracle Corp. is buying its struggling rival Siebel Systems Inc. for about $5.85 billion, continuing a recent shopping spree that has eliminated two of its biggest competitors as it aims to topple Germany’s SAP AG in the business applications software market.

Under the terms of the deal announced Monday, Redwood Shores-based Oracle will pay $10.66 per share in cash or stock for San Mateo-based Siebel, a once rapidly growing maker of customer support software that has fallen on hard times during the past three years.

The price represented a 17 percent premium from Siebel’s market value entering Monday.

Siebel shares rose $1.18, or 12.9 percent, to $10.31 during midday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, where Oracle’s shares gained 12 cents to $13.40.

Siebel has $2.24 billion in cash, reducing Oracle’s net takeover cost to $3.6 billion.

[…] In the past nine months, Oracle has either completed or announced five takeovers of business applications software makers, an expansion that has cost more than $17.6 billion so far.

The spree has swept up two of the industry’s best-known names, Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft Inc., both of which were run by former Oracle executives who had developed a frosty relationship with their former boss, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

For its part, SAP downplayed the significance of Oracle’s latest conquest. “Oracle is in the business to buy customers. Ours is to service customers,” said SAP spokesman Tony Roddam.

The Siebel acquisition, expected to close early next year, affects about 4,000 customers.

[…] Industry analyst Richard Williams of Garban Institutional Equities predicted Oracle will lay off more than 2,000 workers, based on the percentage of jobs that the company eliminated after devouring PeopleSoft, which had about 11,000 employees. Oracle fired 5,000 workers after that deal.