Snippy PR from Oracle:

Pretty hilarious:

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/503333

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/503343

"After HP agreed to acquire Autonomy for over $11.7 billion dollars, Oracle commented that Autonomy had been ‘shopped’ to Oracle as well, but Oracle wasn’t interested because the price was way too high. Mike Lynch, Autonomy CEO, then publically denied that his company had been shopped to Oracle. Specifically, Mr. Lynch said, “If some bank happened to come with us on a list, that is nothing to do with us.” Mr. Lynch then accused of Oracle of being ‘inaccurate’. Either Mr. Lynch has a very poor memory or he’s lying. ‘Some bank’ did not just happen to come to Oracle with Autonomy ‘on a list.’ The truth is that Mr. Lynch came to Oracle, along with his investment banker, Frank Quattrone, and met with Oracle’s head of M&A, Douglas Kehring and Oracle President Mark Hurd at 11 am on April 1, 2011. After listening to Mr. Lynch’s PowerPoint slide sales pitch to sell Autonomy to Oracle, Mr. Kehring and Mr. Hurd told Mr. Lynch that with a current market value of $6 billion, Autonomy was already extremely over-priced. The Lynch shopping visit to Oracle is easy to verify. We still have his PowerPoint slides.”

Another Whopper from Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch
REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., September 28, 2011
Oracle issued the following statement:

“Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch continues to insist that Autonomy was never ‘shopped’ to Oracle. But now at least he remembers and admits to meeting with Oracle President Mark Hurd and Doug Kehring, Oracle’s head of M&A, this past April. But CEO Lynch insists that it was a purely technical meeting, limited to a ‘lively discussion of database technologies.’ Interesting, but not true. The slides Lynch showed Oracle’s Mark Hurd and Doug Kehring were all about Autonomy’s financial results, Autonomy’s stock price history, Autonomy’s Price/Earnings history and Autonomy’s stock market valuation. Ably assisting Mike Lynch’s attempt to sell Autonomy to Oracle was Silicon Valley’s most famous shopper/seller of companies, the legendary investment banker Frank Quattrone. After the sales pitch was over, Oracle refused to make an offer because Autonomy’s current market value of $6 billion was way too high.

We have put Mike Lynch’s PowerPoint slide sales-pitch up on the Oracle website – Oracle.com/PleaseBuyAutonomy – with the hope Mike Lynch will recognize his slides, his memory will be restored, and he will recall what he and Frank Quattrone discussed during their visit to Oracle last April. Yesterday, the Autonomy CEO did not remember having any meeting with Oracle. Today, he remembers the April meeting and inaccurately describes how it came about and what was discussed (see next paragraph). Tomorrow, he will need to explain his slides.

Mike Lynch describes his meeting with Oracle: “On one of my trips to SF (April 2011), Frank Quattrone whom I have known for a long time offered to introduce me to Mark hurd. Oracle was a customer and I have never met him, so it was a good opportunity. Frank does this from time to time on my visits, he has introduced me to many people. . NOTE: Frank was not engaged by Autonomy and there was no process running. The company was not for sale. I recall meeting with mark and someone else I believe called Doug. At the start of the meeting they joked that frank was there to sell them something. Frank and I made it clear that was not the case. We then met and had a lively discussion about database technologies. The meeting lasted approximately 30 mins. Frank is happy to confirm this.”

Oracle plays hardball.

Wow, that’s all roooowr and shit. :)

Fucking awesome.

Autonomy roawrs back

Oracle seems a little confused about the sequence of events and origins of the data it has received, something that would suggests it needs better management of and insight into the unstructured data on its internal systems. We would be delighted to help.

Clearly Oracle wants to tank Autonomy’s stock price so then they can acquire them. But judging from Autonomy’s response, it’s not working.

That’s probably their real target for a hostile takeover.

This just keeps getting better and better.

Autonomy strikes back

A spokesperson for Autonomy said on Thursday:

"Last week in response to a question about unstructured information Oracle made some less-than-enlightened comments on the subject, which Autonomy has been pointing out in the press.

Now, as an attempt at diversion from their poor positioning, Oracle has raised the issue of whether Autonomy was “shopped by its management team” to them.

In April 2011, there was a meeting for approximately thirty or forty minutes between Autonomy and Mark Hurd, which was set up by Frank Quattrone as an introduction to Mark Hurd. Oracle is an Autonomy customer. It was made clear that Autonomy was not for sale and no sale process was under way. Mr. Quattrone’s company was not engaged by Autonomy at that time. There has been no other contact with Oracle since then.

It may well be that investment banks were independently recommending Autonomy as an acquisition target to industry players – that is standard practice for — but this would not have been at our behest. Qatalyst have informed us that the slides Oracle has recently posted on its website were prepared and sent independently by Qatalyst to Oracle on 26 January (the content is clearly from January). This is the first time we have seen them. Autonomy was not involved in this nor was Qatalyst engaged by Autonomy until mid-year. Autonomy did not present these slides in the meeting.

Oracle seems a little confused about the sequence of events and origins of the data it has received, something that would suggests it needs better management of and insight into the unstructured data on its internal systems. We would be delighted to help."

I find the whole thing very odd and rather unprofessional. On top of that, Autonomy’s “we didn’t really know what this company we later hired was doing” argument comes off as unlikely to me, but then I have no experience with corporate activities at that level.

This is awsome. Time to break out the popcorn.

At the moment I think I have to take Oracle’s side in this one. Autonomy makes no explanation for why they have powerpoint covering their financials.

Yeah, the powerpoint is pretty damning.

Autonomy did address it in their statement, but at this point, its all so muddled that its hard to tell what is truly going on.

It may well be that investment banks were independently recommending Autonomy as an acquisition target to industry players – that is standard practice for — but this would not have been at our behest. Qatalyst have informed us that the slides Oracle has recently posted on its website were prepared and sent independently by Qatalyst to Oracle on 26 January (the content is clearly from January). This is the first time we have seen them. Autonomy was not involved in this nor was Qatalyst engaged by Autonomy until mid-year. Autonomy did not present these slides in the meeting.

A bunch of man babies.

This exact same shit happens internally between departments at my company. These days, anyway.

I envision this entire thing as starting with Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd in a jacuzzi with seven or eight nubile nineteen year old coeds from a third-tier school drinking red bull and vodka on the rocks with Bloomberg on the big screen in the background while getting fellated and bumping fists, calling each other bros, etc. Suddenly, they hear the words “Oracle” and “HP” come up the TV, hit the instant recall on the TiVo remote, and catch the story.

Mark instigates the entire thing, getting Larry to call the cute PR pixie away from her fourth disastrous J-date in the past three months to dictate Oracle’s response. He finishes the press release as he reaches the heights of ecstacy from the aforementioned fellatio, reaches his petit mort then hangs up.

Larry and Mark laugh, Larry blows his load too, one more fist bump, then they take their stable of bitches out for sushi at Nobu.

You’ve thought about this waaay too much Stusser.

I want Larry’s life! He just divorced his fourth wife. This is his new girlfriend. He bought the tennis tournament they’re attending in the picture to impress her.

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