NetSuite shareholders endorsed Oracle's acquisition bid, clearing the way for the $9 billion acquisition to conclude Monday, despite earlier efforts by a big investor to block the transaction.
Investors voting on 53% of NetSuite shares approved the bid, Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) said Saturday in a statement. T. Rowe Price, which recently held about 18% of the stock, publicly opposed the $109 per share offer, holding out for $133 per share. (See $9.3B Oracle-NetSuite Merger in Jeopardy.)
Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison was an early investor in NetSuite, and owned about 40% of outstanding shares just before Oracle announced the acquisition in July.
NetSuite provides a cloud suite of software for managing business operations and customer relations. The acquisition will boost Oracle's transition from on-premises to cloud, competing with the likes of Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Salesforce.com Inc. (See Oracle Acquires NetSuite for $9.3B to Boost Cloud Apps.)
NetSuite and Oracle have historically had close ties. In addition to the Ellison connection, NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson previously worked for Ellison heading marketing, and NetSuite Chairman/CTO Evan Goldberg and other top management previously worked at Oracle.
— Mitch Wagner, 
, Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud
What other companies does Ellison have a lot of stock in?