Oracle Corp, on Friday, said it made a $6.7 billion unsolicited offer to buy business software maker BEA Systems Inc, which is under pressure from activist shareholder Carl Icahn to put itself up for sale.

Shares in BEA jumped nearly 32 per cent in premarket trading to $17.96, nearly $1 above Oracle’s offer price of $17 per share, suggesting investors think a rival bid will emerge.

Analysts have said that IBM, Microsoft, CA Inc and HP are also potential suitors for BEA, which sells software that helps business computer systems communicate with each other. Oracle said it delivered a letter to the Board of BEA on October 9, offering $17 per share in cash for the company. The price represents a 25 per cent premium over BEA’s closing stock price on Thursday.

BEA officials were not immediately available for comment. Oracle said its bid for BEA was aimed at bolstering its line of middleware, or programmes that large businesses use to help manage their computer networks.

The deal comes a week after German rival SAP offered $6.8 billion for Business Objects, raising expectations for further consolidation in the software industry.

Biggest deal

Oracle has spent the last several years buying up other specialty software makers, in an effort to compete with Microsoft and SAP.

The proposed deal is Oracle’s biggest since it bought Siebel Systems for about $6 billion in early 2006. Earlier this year it bought Hyperion Solutions for more than $3 billion.

Cognos Inc, a $3.7 billion company based in Ottawa, and MicroStrategy Inc, a $1 billion company based in McLean, Virginia, are also seen as attractive takeover targets in the industry.