Since taking the reins of Germany's SAP last year, Henning Kagermann has hardly had a dull moment. Kagermann assumed the role of chief executive officer at the world's third-largest software company in May 2003 after sharing the title for five years with SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner. But a month after Plattner moved aside, SAP's largest competitors sought to unite against the company. First, rivals PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards agreed to merge. A few days later Oracle, SAP's top competitor, responded with an unsolicited bid to buy PeopleSoft--a $7.7 billion deal that's since been contested by the government as anticompetitive.
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