NetSuite shares on roller coaster ahead of $9.3 billion Oracle deal deadline

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of cloud storage company NetSuite Inc dipped 1 percent to $92.80 on Friday, after surging the day before, maintaining a wide discount from Oracle Inc's takeover offer price that expires on Friday.

Oracle, the software giant run by founder Larry Ellison, agreed to buy NetSuite in July for $109 per share, or $9.3 billion, to better compete with nimbler rivals such as Workday Inc and Salesforce.com Inc that specialize in cloud-based offerings.

In September, NetSuite disclosed that it received a formal letter from T. Rowe Price, the company's second-largest shareholder behind Ellison, opposing the deal price. The letter criticized the process behind the deal and said T. Rowe would not tender its shares.

Oracle was forced to extend its tender offer deadline to Friday. T. Rowe sent a letter last week to Oracle suggesting the company raise its offer to $133 per share. Oracle has said it will not raise its bid.

NetSuite shares soared by more than 6 percent on Thursday, prompting the stock to be temporarily halted. The stock has steadily declined since resuming trading on Thursday afternoon.

According to terms of the Oracle agreement, a majority of NetSuite's 40.8 million unaffiliated shares, or shares not tied to Ellison and other insiders, must be tendered for the deal to be completed.

As of July, T. Rowe owned 12.2 million NetSuite shares, meaning if one of the other large fund managers in the stock, Capital World or Brown Advisory, also refuse to tender their shares, the agreement will struggle to get the majority it needs. Capital World is NetSuite's third-largest shareholder and Brown Advisory is the fourth largest, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Spokeswomen for NetSuite and Oracle could not immediately be reached on Friday to comment about the results of the tender offer.

(Reporting by Michael Flaherty; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)