[anewaccountname]

>This always happens with buyout offers

Everyone thinks they know so much more than the market. In this thread so far I have seen you claim the stock always goes (slightly) lower than the offer, and another guy express puzzlement as to why YHOO even managed to exceed the offer at times today. I hope neither of you were trading BEA Oracle offered ~6 billion, BEA rejected it, and 3 months later Oracle offered ~8billion and BEA accepted. One other thing to keep in mind (this is more picking on the other guy than on you) is that when these deals are announced they are often largely made up of stock (Microsoft is so buried in cash that might not be the case here). If Yahoo! accepted the offer right now, it still might end up with a different future value. Luckily it is not to hard to factor that out by purchasing various positions or leveraged vehicles in or relating to Microsoft/whoever-the-aquirer-may-be.

[dean]

I was not trading BEA when Oracle made the bid to buy them out. Why? What happened to BEA's stock price during these two offers? Did it not move at all? Did it go beyond the offer price? Somewhere in between?