SAP not open to takeover, says chairman

FRANKFURT: SAP chairman Henning Kagermann has sought to quell speculation that the world’s leading maker of business software was open to a takeover by companies such as IBM, Microsoft or Google.

Barely three weeks after one of SAP’s original founders and current supervisory board chief, Hasso Plattner, suggested that the firm could be a suitable takeover target, Kagermann insisted in an interview with the Financial Times that Plattner’s comments had been misunderstood.

“These were single remarks made by someone who was in a good mood,” Kagermann said. “Our customers want a strong, independent SAP.” Kagermann’s remarks appeared to hint at some degree of tension between him and supervisory board chief Plattner, who owns 10.9% of the company he set up and had said that SAP was open to a takeover if the price were right.

Plattner had insisted at the time that he saw only three potential buyers — IBM, Microsoft and Google. And he was adamant that no takeover talks were under way.

“I don’t want to start rumours. There are no negotiations under way. But I don’t want to say that I dislike them so much that I can’t imagine (a tie-up),” Plattner had said at the time.

By contrast, Kagermann told the Tuesday edition of the Financial Times and its sister newspaper Financial Times Deutschland that consolidation in the software sector had peaked.

“I think we’ve seen the main thrust of consolidation. The next steps are going to be marginal,” the chief executive said. Recently, SAP’s arch-rival Oracle bought competitors such as PeopleSoft and Siebel for billions of dollars (euros).

However, SAP preferred organic growth rather than expansion via acquisitions, Kagermann said. “Our strategy of growing organically has proved successful even as other big players have gone together,” he said. “It’ll be enough for us to.