SiliconBeat

Santa Clara drug maker Xenoport said in a filing today it plans to sell 2.5 million more shares at $19 each in a secondary stock offering co-managed by top-shelf underwriters Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

The sale price was 11.6 percent lower than where Xenoport shares closed the day before the stock offering was announced. The company will sell the shares to the underwriters for  $17.91.

Xenoport appears to be taking advantage of good news it released last week when it reported Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another take on executive compensation and the bailout from someone that I really respect, Graef Crystal. For many years, Crystal wrote a column on executive compensation for Bloomberg. Now he’s launched his own Web site where he’s providing some in-depth analysis on issues that touch on executive compensation.

Crystal just posted his view on the debate on the bailout and executive compensation. In sum: Crystal things the bailout and limiting executive pay are both bad ideas:

“How about this for a deal: We don’t bail out the banks to the tune of $700 billion. And we don’t have pay controls on executives, either.”

His concern is that without the proper incentives, the banks won’t be able to attract the talented managers they need to turn themselves around. He also worries that companies will still find loopholes in any new restrictions, and the result will be unintended consequences. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, maybe three BEA Systems (BEAS) posts in one week is bordering on the obsessive. But we can’t help ourselves.

The latest tidbit actually comes courtesy Michelle Leder at footnoted.org where she dug through a merger proxy filed by BEA.

You can read Leder’s full post here. 

It turns out that Oracle began pursuing BEA back in June. It also happens that BEA had already retained Goldman Sachs in June to pursue its “strategic options.” The first hint of turmoil the public got came in September when investor Carl Icahn disclosed he’d taken a 8.5 percent stake in BEA and favored a sale of the company. Oracle publicly disclosed a $17 per share offer in September.

When Oracle threatened to rescind its offer in late October, BEA’s board decided it would be prepared to talk about a sale if someone offered $21 per share.  Things cooled for awhile with sporadic contact between Oracle and BEA while Icahn tried to play matchmaker. Eventually, Icahn helped bring Oracle around to $19.375 per share which brought the sides together to create the deal announced on Jan. 16.