Dive Brief:

• Early Saturday morning, Oracle announced it had received enough NetSuite shareholder approval to move forward with its proposed $9.3 billion acquisition of the business cloud software company.
• Oracle will complete its NetSuite acquisition on Monday, the company said in a statement.
• More than 76% of total issued and outstanding shares — and 53% of total unaffiliated shares — were tendered in favor of the deal.

Dive Insight:

Since the beginning T. Rowe Price has pushed back against the value of the deal, calling Oracle’s bid for NetSuite undervalued. Oracle extended the expiration date until Friday for NetSuite shareholders to approve its bid, threatening to walk if the offer was rejected. Last week the investment management firm asked Oracle to raise its offer price from $109 per share to $133 per share.

Oracle’s $9.3 billion attempt to purchase NetSuite would reunite Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison with Zach Nelson, the chief executive of NetSuite who was Oracle’s head of marketing in the early 1990s. The Ellison family is one of the largest NetSuite investors, and holds almost 40% of its shares. But T. Rowe Price holds 18% of NetSuite’s shares. Without the investment firm’s backing, the deal would have stalled.  

Oracle has faced stiff competition from business software rivals like Salesforce and Workday, and its cloud offerings have struggled to compete in the market dominated by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. But NetSuite is one of the original cloud business software companies, and could help to boost Oracle’s software product portfolio and market share.