Monopoly fans vote to add cat, toss iron tokens

PAWTUCKET, R.I. (AP) — The Scottie dog has a new nemesis in Monopoly after fans voted in an online contest to add a cat token to the property trading game, replacing the iron, toy maker Hasbro Inc. announced Wednesday.

The results were announced after the shoe, wheelbarrow and iron were neck and neck for elimination in the final hours of voting that sparked passionate efforts by fans to save their favorite tokens, and by businesses eager to capitalize on publicity surrounding pieces that represent their products.

The vote on Facebook closed just before midnight on Tuesday, marking the first time that fans have had a say on which of the eight tokens to add and which one to toss. The pieces identify the players and have changed quite a lot since Parker Brothers bought the game from its original designer in 1935.

Rhode Island-based Hasbro announced the new piece Wednesday morning.

Other pieces that contested for a spot on Monopoly included a robot, diamond ring, helicopter and guitar.

"I think there were a lot of cat lovers in the world that reached out and voted," said Jonathan Berkowitz, vice president for Hasbro gaming marketing.

The Scottie Dog was the most popular of the classic tokens, and received 29 percent of the vote, the company said. The iron got the fewest votes and was kicked to the curb.

The cat received 31 percent of votes for new tokens.

The results were not entirely surprising to animal lovers.

The Humane Society of the United States says on its website that there were more than 86 million cats living in U.S. homes, with 33 percent of households owning at least one feline in August 2011. Worldwide, there were an estimated 272 million cats in 194 countries in June 2008, according to London-based World Society for the Protection of Animals.

The online contest to change the tokens was sparked by chatter on Facebook, where Monopoly has more than 10 million fans. The initiative was intended to ensure that a game created nearly eight decades ago remains relevant and engaging to fans today.

"Tokens are always a key part of the Monopoly game ... and our fans are very passionate about their tokens," Berkowitz said.

Monopoly's iconic tokens originated when the niece of game creator Charles Darrow suggested using charms from her charm bracelet for tokens. The game is based on the streets of Atlantic City, N.J., and has sold more than 275 million units worldwide.

The other tokens currently in use are a racecar, a shoe, thimble, top hat, wheelbarrow and battleship. Most of the pieces were introduced with the first Parker Brothers iteration of the game in 1935, and the Scottie dog and wheelbarrow were added in the early 1950s.

The original version also included a lantern, purse, cannon and a rocking horse. A horse and rider token was used in the 1950s. During World War II, metal tokens were replaced by wooden ones, because metal was needed for the war effort.

"I'm sad to see the iron go," Berkowitz said. "Personally, I'm a big fan of the racecar so I'm very relieved it was saved but it is sad to see the iron go."

The social-media buzz created by the Save Your Token Campaign attracted numerous companies that pushed to protect specific tokens that reflect their products.

That includes garden tool maker Ames True Temper Inc. of Camp Hill, Penn., that spoke out in favor of the wheelbarrow and created a series of online videos that support the tool and online shoe retailer Zappos which pushed to save the shoe, Berkowitz said.

Versions of Monopoly with the new token will come out later this year.

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Monopoly: https://www.hasbro.com/monopoly

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Rodrique Ngowi can be reached at www.twitter.com/ngowi

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Chicago sees surge in foreclosure auctions

More than 35,000 homes and small multifamily buildings in the Chicago area completed the foreclosure process last year, the highest number since the housing crisis began, and the vast majority of them became bank-owned.

An increase in foreclosure auctions was expected since lenders shelved many foreclosure cases while state and federal authorities investigated allegations of faulty foreclosure processes. Still, the heightened level of auctions — 35,244 in 2012, compared with 20,281 in 2011 — along with an increase in initial foreclosure filings, shows the local housing market has a long road to recovery, according to the Woodstock Institute.

"There's going to be pain in the housing market in the short term," said Katie Buitrago, senior policy and communications associate at Woodstock. "There's still high levels of filings. Five years into it, there is still work to be done to help people save their homes."

The Chicago-based public policy and research group is expected to release its report on 2012 foreclosure activity Wednesday.

The year-end numbers show that, with few exceptions, all Chicago neighborhoods and suburban communities saw high double-digit percentage gains in auctions last year. Across the six-county area, 91.3 percent of the foreclosed properties were repossessed by lenders. At the same time, notices of initial default sent to homeowners, the first step in the foreclosure process, increased by 2.9 percent last year, to 66,783.

Real estate agents have worried for more than two years about a glut of foreclosed properties — a shadow inventory — that banks would list for sale en masse and cause home values to plunge. That largely has not happened, but the vast number of distressed properties in the market has kept a lid on local home values.

On Tuesday, for instance, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's websites listed 2,415 Cook County homes for sale that the two agencies had repossessed.

Chicago-area home prices, including distressed sales, fell 2.3 percent in December from a year ago, housing analytics firm CoreLogic said Tuesday. Illinois was one of only four states to see home-price depreciation.

The increase in auctions "is a mixed blessing," Buitrago said. "We've been having a lot of trouble in the region with vacant properties that have been languishing for years. The longer they're vacant, the more likely they are to be a destabilizing force in their communities."

Woodstock found that within the city of Chicago, there were 20 communities where more than 1 in 10 owner-occupied one- to four-unit residential buildings and condos went through foreclosure from 2008 to 2012. Five of those neighborhoods are included in the city's 18-month-old Micro-Market Recovery Program, a coordinated effort to stabilize neighborhoods and property values hit hard by foreclosures and vacant buildings.

Also designed to benefit hard-hit areas are the recent establishment of a Cook County Land Bank and legislation waiting for Gov. Pat Quinn's signature that will fast-track the foreclosure process for vacant, abandoned homes while providing financial resources to foreclosure prevention efforts.

mepodmolik@tribune.com

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Father saw 'horrifying' accident injure son during opera rehearsal

Lyric actor injured in fire accident. (WGN - Chicago)

A fire-breathing stilt walker burned when flames flared up on his face during a dress rehearsal at the Lyric Opera of Chicago is expected to be released from the hospital Thursday, his father told the Chicago Tribune.

“It’s horrifying,” said Clifton Truman Daniel, 55, who was in the audience watching his son Wesley when the mishap occurred late Monday afternoon. “You don’t believe it. At first, everything’s fine. You’re proud of him. You’re amazed at what he’s learned to do, and suddenly he’s in trouble.”

The 24-year-old actor was taken in serious-to-critical condition to Northwestern Memorial Hospital suffering burns to his throat and second-degree burns to his face, fire officials said. Initially, it was thought Daniel was not suffering breathing problems, but he apparently was and was transferred to Loyola University Medical Center in critical condition, officials said.

Doctors intubated Daniel as a precaution to help him breathe, his father said. But there was no damage to his lungs or airway and the tube was removed Monday night, according to his father.

"Doctors likened them to a severe sunburn and he will heal,” his father said of the burns. “He shouldn’t have any scarring.”

Clifton Daniel said he was happily sitting in the audience of the Lyric Opera, watching his son walk on stilts and spit fire out of his mouth.

He watched as Wesley Daniel picked up a torch and a little jar of fluid and blew two fire balls. Then suddenly his son’s mask was on fire and he started patting his neck and chest before walking across the stage toward stagehands who were carrying fire extinguishers.

Daniel said he ran to his son backstage, where he was being treated with compresses. Paramedics had already been called and his son was upbeat, even giving a thumbs-up, the father said.

Clifton Truman Daniel said he is the grandson of former President Harry S. Truman and Wesley Daniel is the president's great-grandson.

Wesley Daniel said his son graduated from Roosevelt University and has been acting for about three years. He was hired as a back-up for the opera “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg” in case someone called in sick or didn’t show up. Wesley Daniel stepped in when an actor was injured last week, his father said.

Tribune photographer Jason Wambsgans, who was at the rehearsal, said it appeared Daniel had spilled propellant "on his chin or his chest or something. It kind of consumed him, and he was staggering across the stage and then fell off his stilts on the opposite side of the stage.”

Wambsgans said he arrived at the rehearsal at the beginning of the third act to take pictures for an upcoming Tribune review of the opera “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.”

The first scene of the third act took about an hour. It was in the second scene when Wambsgans pulled out a long-angle lens to take pictures of the busy stage full of extras, in this case, circus performers. Daniel was one of them.

When it appeared that Daniel, on stilts, was ready to put some sort of propellant in his mouth to shoot fireballs, Wambsgans said he started snapping and captured the flames flaring up on Daniel.

Wambsgans said he saw people in the wings of the stage spraying Daniel with fire extinguishers. “Half of the extras were transfixed by that,” Wambsgans said.

It took about 15 more seconds before the rest of the extras stopped singing and acting, realizing what had happened, he said.

After a 30-minute break, a visibly distressed crew was back rehearsing, Wambsgans said. But the rehearsal was cut short, ending about 6 p.m.

Daniel was wearing a flame-proof costume and mask, a spokeswoman for the Lyric said in an email.  The dress rehearsal was interrupted, but it later resumed and was in the last act of “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg” by about 5:30 p.m.

Daniel was performing a stunt that had been approved by the Fire Department, according to the Lyric.

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Dell to go private in landmark $24.4 billion deal

(Reuters) - Michael Dell will take Dell Inc private for $24.4 billion in the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis, a deal that allows the billionaire chief executive officer to revive the fortunes of his computer company without Wall Street scrutiny.

The deal - announced on Tuesday and financed with cash and equity from Michael Dell, cash from private equity firm Silver Lake, and a $2 billion loan from Microsoft Corp - will end a rocky 24-year run on public markets for a company conceived in a college dorm room.

To many investors, Dell's decline in market share since its peak in the early 2000s symbolizes the rapidly dwindling prospects of the personal computer industry.

The world's No. 3 PC maker, which Michael Dell began in 1984 as a computer-sales outfit while he was still a 19-year-old pre-med student at the University of Texas, is now going through a painful transition from a pure PC maker to a one-stop provider of enterprise computing services. Sales of PCs still make up the majority of its revenue.

Analysts say the restructuring may entail job cuts and more costly acquisitions, as the company arms itself to do battle with larger and more established rivals like Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp.

"We recognize this process will take more time," Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden told Reuters. "We will have to make investments, and we will have to be patient to implement the strategy.

"And under a new private company structure, we will have time and flexibility to really pursue and realize the end-to-end solutions strategy."

Gladden said the company's strategy would "generally remain the same" after the deal closed, but "we won't have the scrutiny and limitations associated with operating as a public company."

Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake are paying $13.65 per share in cash for the world's No. 3 computer maker. Michael Dell's MSD Capital investment firm will also provide cash financing for the deal. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets will offer debt financing.

Shares of Dell were up 0.8 percent at $13.38 in morning trading.

Dell, whose fairy-tale rise throughout the 1990s and the early part of the next decade once made it a Wall Street darling, has ceded market share in recent years to nimbler rivals such as Lenovo Group. That is in spite of Michael Dell's efforts in the five years since he retook the helm of the company following a brief hiatus during which its fortunes waned.

As of 2012's fourth quarter, Dell's share of the global PC market had slid to just above 10 percent from 12.5 percent a year earlier as its shipments dived 20 percent - the fastest quarterly pace of decline in years, according to research house IDC.

While analysts said Dell could be more nimble as a private company, it will still have to deal with the same difficult market conditions. International Business Machines Corp last decade underwent what is considered one of the most successful transformations of a hardware company, all while trading on public markets.

"This is an opportunity for Michael Dell to be a little more flexible managing the company," said FBN Securities analyst Shebly Seyrafi. "That doesn't take away from the fact they will have challenges in the PC market like they did before."

RECORD BUYOUT

The deal would be the biggest private equity-backed leverage buyout since Blackstone Group LP's takeout of the Hilton Hotels Group in July 2007 for more than $20 billion, and is the 11th-largest on record.

The parties expect the transaction to close before the end of Dell's 2014 second quarter, which ends in July.

News of the buyout talks first emerged on January 14, although they reportedly started in the latter part of 2012. Michael Dell had previously acknowledged thinking about going private as far back as 2010.

The $13.65-per-share price is a premium of about 24 percent to the average $11 price of Dell stock before news of the deal talks broke and is far below the $17.61 that the shares were trading for a year ago.

"The key question here is will shareholders approve this deal, because there is practically no premium where the stock is trading," Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said.

J.P. Morgan and Evercore Partners were financial advisers, and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP was the legal adviser to the special committee of Dell's board. Goldman Sachs was financial adviser, and Hogan Lovells was legal adviser to Dell.

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz was legal adviser to Michael Dell. BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets were financial advisers to Silver Lake, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP was its legal adviser.

(Writing by Ben Berkowitz and Edwin Chan; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Lisa Von Ahn)

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Vonn hospitalized after crash in super-G at worlds

SCHLADMING, Austria (AP) — Lindsey Vonn crashed and apparently hurt her right knee during a super-G at the world championships Tuesday and was taken to a hospital by helicopter.

Austria's ski federation president said doctors told him that Vonn tore her cruciate and lateral ligaments. Peter Schroecksnadel added that this is "the only injury she has, nothing besides this."

The U.S. team gave no immediate update on Vonn's condition but said it would release a statement later in the day.

This is the sixth straight major championship in which Vonn has been hit with injuries. This crash comes almost exactly one year before the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

The four-time overall World Cup champion lost balance on her right leg while landing after a jump. Her ski came off immediately, and she slid off course and hit a gate before coming to a halt. She was treated on the slope for 12 minutes before being going to the hospital.

Vonn returned to the circuit last month after an almost monthlong break from racing to fully recover from an intestinal illness that put her in a hospital for two days in November.

Vonn trailed race winner Tina Maze of Slovenia by 0.12 seconds shortly before the crash.

The race, which was postponed for 3½ hours because of fog, resumed after another 15-minute delay. Several racers struggled with the conditions.

"It's not a very difficult course but in some parts you couldn't see anything," Fabienne Suter of Switzerland said.

Vonn is building a long list of medical mishaps. Two years ago, she pulled out midway through the last worlds in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, because of a mild concussion. At the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Vonn skied despite a severely bruised shin to win the downhill and take bronze in the super-G.

At the 2009 worlds in Val d'Isere, France, she sliced her thumb on a champagne bottle after sweeping gold in the downhill and super-G, forcing her out of the giant slalom. At the 2007 worlds in Are, Sweden, Vonn injured her knee in training and missed her final two events.

And at the 2006 Turin Olympics, she had a horrific crash during downhill training and went directly from her hospital room to the mountain to compete in four of her five events.

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Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Queen Latifah production co. strikes Netflix deal

NEW YORK (AP) — Queen Latifah's production company, Flavor Unit Entertainment, has signed a deal with Netflix.

The entertainer announced Tuesday that the multiyear deal gives the streaming service first look at titles from her production company. It starts this spring.

Latifah launched Flavor Unit in New Jersey with Shakim Compere. It's now based in Miami. The company has produced films such as "Bringing Down the House" and "Just Wright," both starring Latifah. It also produced the HBO film "Life Support," which earned a Golden Globe Award for Latifah.

Latifah said in a statement that Netflix is a "strong brand and the perfect place to showcase our projects."

Flavor Unit is also producing the upcoming Terrence Howard thriller "House of Bodies" and "Percentage," starring Ving Rhames and Macy Gray.

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U.S. sues S&P over mortgage bond ratings

The federal government is embarking on one of its most ambitious efforts to assign blame for the financial crisis, going after Wall Street's biggest credit rating firm for its role in pumping up the housing bubble.

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit late Monday in Los Angeles federal court against Standard & Poor's Corp. The suit accuses the company's analysts of issuing glowing reviews on troubled mortgage securities whose subsequent failure helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The action marks the first federal crackdown against a major credit rater, and it signals an untested legal tack after limited success in holding the nation's banks accountable for the part they played in the crisis.

The government selected Los Angeles as the venue to file the lawsuit in part because it was one of the regions hardest hit when the bottom fell out of the housing market. Hundreds of thousands of California residents lost their homes to foreclosure, and others saw their wealth evaporate as properties plummeted in value.

"The DOJ is playing hardball and they're coming at the ratings agency in a very different direction with a potentially very powerful weapon to push S&P to the settlement table," said Jeffrey Manns, a law professor at George Washington University.

In addition to the Justice Department, several state attorneys general are investigating the ratings agency. States such as California and New York are expected to pursue their own investigations and legal action, people familiar with the matter said.

S&P has faced other lawsuits from investors and the states of Illinois and Connecticut.

California is expected to sue S&P under the state's False Claims Act, one person familiar with the matter said. The law makes it a crime to defraud the state, and damages of up to three times the amount of the claim can be awarded if the victim was an institutional investor, such as one of the state's pension funds.

The federal action does not involve any criminal allegations. Critics have complained that the government has yet to send any senior bankers or Wall Street executives to jail for potential illegal behavior that led to the crisis.

But civil actions typically require a much lower burden of proof.

Investors rely in part on rating agencies to decide what stocks, bonds or other securities to buy based on the agencies' recommendations about their safety. The three major raters – S&P, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings — have all been criticized for giving perfect AAA ratings to complex bonds in 2007 that later turned out to be nearly worthless.

It was not known why Standard & Poor's was singled out in the federal lawsuit.

The government and S&P have tangled before. The rating agency in August 2011 issued a historic downgrade of U.S. creditworthiness and threatened to lower it even further.

The two sides were reportedly in settlement talks that broke down during the past week. The ratings firm could face hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and new restrictions on its business model if found liable of civil violations.

S&P, which is a unit of publisher McGraw Hill, denounced the lawsuit in a detailed and strongly worded response. The company said the claims were unjustified, adding that it acted in "good faith" to warn the world about some of the securities that went belly up.

"A DOJ lawsuit would be entirely without factual or legal merit," the company said, adding that even the U.S. government "publicly stated that problems in the subprime market appeared to be contained."

The rating firm has steadfastly maintained that it was protected under the 1st Amendment to state an opinion about certain financial products. That argument may not hold up if federal or state investigators are able to prove that the ratings agency knowingly gave improper evaluations.

The lawsuit zeros in on a series of collateralized debt obligations that were created at the height of the housing boom in 2007, according to S&P. The value of these exotic mortgage securities was nearly wiped out when the subprime mortgages they were tied to imploded.

Lawrence J. White, an economics professor at New York University's business school, believes that the housing crisis could have been more contained if ratings agencies had been more careful.

"If they had been more conservative in their ratings, fewer bonds would have been sold, the interest rates would have been higher, fewer mortgages would have been granted," White said. "There would still have been a housing bubble, but it might not have been quite so severe."

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$5 million bail in 'exceptionally brutal' Aurora murder

An Aurora man was ordered held on $5 million bail today for allegedly beating a young woman to death with a hammer and then torching her body and her car, a crime a prosecutor labeled “exceptionally brutal.”

Juan Garnica Jr., 18, of the 400 block of East Ashland Avenue, appeared briefly via video in Kane County bond court, his first court appearance since he was charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in the death of Abigail Villalpando, 18, of Aurora.

It was the first homicide in Aurora since 2011, more than 400 days ago, according to city spokesman Dan Ferrelli.

Two other men have been charged with concealing the homicide.

Judge Christine Downs set bail for one of the men, Enrique Prado, 19, of Aurora, at $100,000. Assistant State’s Attorney Bill Engerman told the judge that police have no evidence that Prado, who also faces arson charges, participated in the murder of Villalpando. Prado has also been cooperative with police since his arrest, the prosecutor said.

A third man, 20-year-old Jose Becerra, did not appear in court this morning. He may appear this afternoon on his charge of concealment of a homicidal death.

Villalpando’s body, which was so badly burned that it had to be identified through dental records, was discovered in a wooded area near Montgomery Sunday morning, about two days after her car was found engulfed in flames under a bridge in Aurora.

Police said the victim met Prado and Garnica Thursday at Prado’s home, and that Garnica hit Villalpando in the head several times with a hammer after Prado left the room. Engerman declined to disclose why VIllalpando went to the house, but police did say she knew Garnica and Prado.

Police have not disclosed a motive for the attack.

Sometime Thursday night , Garnica allegedly drove the victim’s car to the High Street bridge over the railroad tracks on the city’s near east side an left it there. Villalpando’s body was concealed in a container in Prado’s garage, police said.

On Friday, Garnica and Prado bought a can of gas, which Garncia used to torch Villalpando’s 2003 Nissan Altima. Garnica then allegedly burned the victim’s body in a barrel in the backyard at Prado’s house. He then enlisted Becerra to help dump the body, police said.

Villalpando’s family reported her missing about 2:30 a.m. Friday, after she failed to show up at her waitress job at a  Denny’s at the Fox Valley Center shopping center. A restaurant employee called the family around 5 p.m. Thursday to report that she had not showed up for work.

Engerman said Garnica has a 2011 arrest for a stolen car, a charge that was later reduced to criminal trespass to a vehicle.

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Oracle to buy network gear maker Acme Packet for $2.1 billion

(Reuters) - Oracle Corp will buy network equipment maker Acme Packet Inc for $2.1 billion, putting it in a better position to compete with Cisco Systems Inc in moving data securely over internet networks.

Shares of Acme were trading 7 cents above the offer price of $29.25 in early trading on Monday, suggesting that some investors anticipate a counter bid.

The deal is Oracle's biggest since it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010 for about $7 billion. The company bought nearly a dozen companies in 2012, including Eloqua Inc for $810 million in December.

Telecom carriers have been dumping wireline and other legacy services as people increasingly use a newer breed of devices to access Internet and businesses shift to IP (internet protocol) networks, an area where Acme Packet specializes.

"Users are increasingly connected and expect to communicate anytime and anywhere using their application, device, and network of choice," Oracle said in a statement.

Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison, who has used acquisitions to boost the company's revenue dramatically over the past decade, had said in October he would not rule out a big deal "down the road".

"We have been expecting Oracle to make a bigger push into the networking market as convergence across the IT world appears to be inevitable and today's deal supports this notion," said Brian White, an analyst at Topeka Capital Markets.

The offer represents a 22 percent premium to Acme Packet's Friday close on the Nasdaq. The deal, which Acme said is expected to close in the first half of 2013, is worth about $1.7 billion, net of cash.

Oracle shares were down 1 percent at $35.88 in early trading on the Nasdaq.

Shares of Acme rival Sonus Networks Inc also rose 14 percent on the news, while those of Juniper Networks Inc were up 2 percent.

Acme has been hit by weak telecom spending in the last few quarters as carriers spend less on new projects and delay existing ones. Its shares had fallen 18 percent in the last year as of Friday.

Acme also reported fourth-quarter earnings of 9 cents per share, excluding items, on revenue of $70.7 million.

Analysts expected an adjusted profit of 8 cents per share and revenue of $68.9 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

(Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Sreejiraj Eluvangal and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

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