BEA Systems’ board formally rejected Oracle’s $17-per-share offer to acquire it last Friday, saying the company is trying to buy it on the cheap. “BEA is worth substantially more to Oracle, to others and importantly, to our shareholders than the price indicated in your letter,” William Klein, BEA’s vice-president of business planning and development, wrote to Oracle.

And by shareholders, Klein apparently meant billionaire investor Carl Icahn–who, though he’s been pushing for the company to sell itself, said in a statement that he agreed that, at $17 a share, the price was too low.

And perhaps it is. At this writing, BEA is trading well above $18, suggesting that Oracle’s offer of $17 a share is a tad anemic. And Oracle surely knows this as well as anyone. After all, this isn’t the first time it’s low-balled a potential acquisition. Oracle began its pursuit of PeopleSoft with a first stingy bid that it later sweetened. And like BEA, PeopleSoft spurned its advances, which in its case was not a winning strategy–because Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has the patience of the devil himself in these situations, especially when he can hurt a competitor’s business during takeover wrangling.

“This is very clearly thought out,” Ellison said after Oracle first besieged PeopleSoft. “I think we’re likely to be successful and we are very determined to see this through to the end. … With or without us, PeopleSoft can’t survive. They can’t compete in this business in the long term.”

Message to BEA: Like PeopleSoft, you will be assimilated. And, BEA’s Klein best be careful, lest he go out like former PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway, of whom Ellison once said: “I think at one point, ‘Craigey’ thought I was going to shoot his dog, Bear. If Craigey and Bear were standing next to each other and I had one bullet, trust me, it wouldn’t be for the dog.”

If we maintain our trajectory and IBM maintains their trajectory, we could pass them as early as the end of this year or certainly next year to be the No. 2 player in middleware.”

–Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Sept. 21

Carl Icahn’s recent appeals to BEA Systems management to discuss a possible sale of the company seem to have set Oracle’s salivary glands flowing. This week the CRM gourmand made an unsolicited $6.66 billion bid for the business-management software maker.

In a letter to BEA’s board Tuesday, Oracle offered $17 a share for BEA–a 25% premium over BEA’s closing stock price yesterday. “We believe our all-cash offer provides the best value for BEA’s shareholders and the best home for BEA’s employees and customers,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips. “This proposal is the culmination of repeated conversations with BEA’s management over the last several years. We look forward to completing a friendly transaction as soon as possible.”

We’ll have to see about that. According to Kevin Faulkner, BEA’s senior vice president of investor relations, the company’s not for sale. ‘Course, PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway said the same thing back in 2003 and look how that turned out.

Anyway, if Tuesday’s offer leads to a deal, Oracle will have spent some $28 billion on acquisitions–33 of them–in the last three years or so. A vast sum, but one apparently well spent. The company’s recent purchases have been widely credited for a 26% spike in earnings in its latest fiscal year and for a 91% increase in its stock price since November 2005. If things continue along that way, we may see Larry Ellison’s IBM prediction come to pass sooner, rather than later.