Quite apart from any awkwardness in the way he handled the hostile bid by rival Oracle for the firm he was running, Craig Conway seems to have been an unpopular CEO of PeopleSoft, a large enterprise-software company. Three managers who reported directly to him were apparently close to resigning in frustration, and the board was unhappy about 'misstatements' he made to analysts. So even though there was no 'smoking gun', as the board put it, Mr. Conway was fired on October 1st and replaced by the firm's founder, David Duffield. Mr. Duffield's brief is now to address Mr. Conway's perceived shortcomings and his obsession with fending off the $7.7 billion takeover bid from Oracle. At the same time, says Paul Hamerman of Forrester, a research firm, Mr. Conway offered no compelling technological vision for PeopleSoft, and seemed deaf to 'quite a noise level of customer complaints'. Mr. Conway's firing prompted much speculation that PeopleSoft might now be more prepared to negotiate with Oracle rather than fight it. But PeopleSoft insists that both Mr. Duffield and the board focus on a long-term strategy for the company, not a quick sale. On the same day that Mr. Conway was fired, however, Oracle scored another victory when America's Justice Department said that it would not appeal against a judge's decision to allow the takeover on antitrust grounds. So, this week, the battle moved to another courtroom, in Delaware, where both companies are registered. In this suit, Oracle is claiming that People. Soft is not properly looking after the interests of its shareholders by using a 'poison pill' and a 'customer assurance programme' to keep Oracle at bay. The poison pill is a very common provision, and one that PeopleSoft has had for almost a decade. It floods the market with new shares if a predator buys more than 20% of PeopleSoft's equity, thus making an acquisition very difficult. The customer-rebate programme, by contrast, was put in place last June. It guarantees that any PeopleSoft client can get a refund for between two and five times its software-licence fee if support for that software is ever cut off. To Oracle, this represents another dirty tactic, since it amounts to a potential liability of more than $2 billion. To PeopleSoft, however, it was not only fair but necessary to retain customers, since Oracle said at the time of its bid that it planned to kill PeopleSoft's products and switch clients to its own. The two companies' lawyers are likely to be at it for another few weeks, which could yet see a higher bid from Oracle. According to the passage, Craig Conway