CalPERS Tenders PeopleSoft Holdings to Oracle

The fund tendered its 1.5 million shares yesterday, or 0.4 percent of the stock, spokesman Brad Pacheco said, who indicated that CalPERS investment staff recommended the move. “They felt it made sense economically to take that action and we think it’s a fair price for the company,” Pacheco told PLANSPONSOR.com.

CalPERS’s support for the $8.8 billion-bid comes as Redwood City, California-based Oracle scrambles to get at least of half PeopleSoft’s shares tendered by the Friday deadline. Both companies stepped up the fight this week.

In one of a number of skirmishes connected to the takeover bid, PeopleSoft Chief Executive David Duffield accused Oracle in a  Web statement of spreading “distortions” about his personal stocksales.

Oracle phoned PeopleSoft workers to persuade them to tender their shares by the deadline, PeopleSoft General Counsel James Shaughnessy said in a memo to employees. The Shaughnessy memo laid out the company’s plans to succeed as an independent concern by adding products and enhancing customer service.

“It is important for all stockholders to know that PeopleSoft is a vibrant, strong company with a focused, motivated management team and employee base dedicated to executing on that plan,” Shaughnessy said in the memo .

According to a Bloomberg tally, shareholders so far have tendered 9.2% of the outstanding PeopleSoft shares to Ocracle while one large institutional investor decided to opt out of a tender offer for 35.1 million or 9.3% of the PeopleSoft shares.