Oracle has extended its $19.50-a-share hostile tender offer for PeopleSoft for the fifth time, moving it from Friday October 17 until midnight of New Year's Eve. It's still waiting for the Justice Department to say something one way or another about whether the government would approve the deal or not and apparently that's moved out until December now, November if the stars fall into a certain alignment. The European Commission is supposed to make its decision by November 17 unless of course it decides it wants more information. PeopleSoft CTO Rick Bergquist has been going around saying the EU has reservations. Oracle says it's collected a mere 24.8 million PeopleSoft shares, down from the 38.7 million it had last month. There's a tad over 416 million PeopleSoft shares outstanding. Oracle also said at its shareholders meeting Monday that it won't overpay for the place, which is cute considering PeopleSoft stock is up over the $19.50 Oracle's put on the table. This kind of preparatory talk suggests Oracle will eventually be bowing out the PeopleSoft pursuit. Oracle will probably wind up taking its money and spending it on other acquisitions in an effort to get its revenues up. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison claims to have considered buying Sun, but figured it'd be a bad deal. He'll stay in software instead, he said. Speculation has turned to BEA as a next possible target. BEA's market cap is something like $5.6 billion.