Social media startups catering to the business market have had a mixed reception from IPO investors but more success finding M&A exits. And they have brought a load of venture capitalists along for the ride.

Shareholder Representative Services is trying something new this holiday season. SRS is unveiling AcqMan — acq is short for acquisition–a game which tests players’ knowledge of M&A. This is how it works: Users pick from six different AcqMan avatars that represent different deep-pocketed strategic buyers. Choices include Dell, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Takeda.

SAP Ventures is not your typical corporate venture investor. It views its parent company, SAP AG, as an LP rather than a corporate benefactor and raises funds instead of submitting budgets. Six investing directors get carried interest, as they would if they were partners on Sand Hill Road.

To extend its core offerings of relational databases, Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., has agreed to acquire Endeca Technologies, maker of unstructured data management, Web commerce, and business intelligence software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. PRESS RELEASE: Oracle today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Endeca Technologies, Inc., a [...]

UBS Now Stands For U-B-Steppin’!

Keep it Classy, San Francisco: Ellison trashes Salesforce

… But Only After Benioff responds to his keynote diss by holding court across the street

Big Money in clouds

Wait, Sarah Palin ISN’T Running for President? That’s probably going to hurt Joe McGinniss’ book sales

Give Google credit for lighting the fuse with its harangue last week entitled “When Patents Attack Android.” Now investors and entrepreneurs are weighing in on the heels of a Department of Justice probe. This weekend, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban offered a scathing assessment of the troubled patent system on his blog when he claimed [...]

Carried Interest Taxes: The Obama reckoning has come.
Related: KKR is afraid of interference from the gubmint.

Flash Crash: We just had a hearing yesterday; yet another panel is coming. This crash is the best thing to happen for bureaucracy since the Kremlin.

The Fed: Its superpowers remain intact; it will continue to oversee small banks.

SAP: It’s buying Sybase for $5.25 billion. Like so much in life, the deal is really about Oracle.

Now that Larry Ellison has brought the America’s Cup back to San Francisco, it is only appropriate for the Bay Area’s elite to dust off their interest in sailing.

When the wind blows through the bay, Bill Joy may remember that he owns a sailboat and stop renting it out at 225,000 euros per week. And it’s easy to imagine Tom Perkins looking wistfully to sea from his perch in the penthouse of the Millennium Tower and thinking that he’d like to be back on the water.

There’s so much to do in advance of the season though, from remembering where that boat you bought during the dotcom boom is actually moored to pumping the bilge and scraping the hull.

Oracle has agreed to acquire Convergin Inc., a Herzliya, Israel-based provider of real-time service brokering solutions. No financial terms were disclosed. Convergin has raised around $10 million in VC funding from Pitango Venture Capital and Rich Investment Ltd.

Oracle has agreed to acquire certain assets of HyperRoll, a Mountain View, Calif.-based provider of financial reporting acceleration solutions. No financial terms were disclosed. HyperRoll has raised over $26 million in VC funding between 2000 and 2004, from firms like Bessemer Venture Partners, Denali Venture Capital, Greylock Partners, Lighthouse Capital Partners, Vertex Management and Sequoia Capital. [...]