Warda Ali, a 15-year-old high school sophomore from San Jose, gets a hug from mother Aasia Ali, above, after winning a $10,000 prize for student entrepreneurship from the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. Warda created a business plan to produce customized cricket bats, like the one at right, and sell them online for much less than the competition. Her angle? Sourcing the bats in Pakistan, where she was born, rather than Australia or the United Kingdom. Warda’s plan grew out of her family’s love of cricket, with two uncles and her father all playing on a Bay Area team. She hopes to travel to Pakistan next summer to hire manufacturers and start the business. “I would definitely have an adult with me, preferably my uncle or father,” said Warda, who celebrated the award at a surprise party given by her Silver Creek High classmates in San Jose Friday. “But I would like to be there and sit in for the negotiations, not just have someone represent me.”

House price inflation picked up in April, pushing the cost of an average UK home to 209,454, official figures showed today.

The Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) said the month saw the cost of a typical home increase by 1.2%, compared with a 0.8% rise in April last year.

It propelled the annual rate of inflation up to 11.3%, indicating that there is still buoyancy in the market despite tentative signs elsewhere of a gradual cooling.

Northern Ireland continued to outperform the other home countries, with runaway house price inflation climbing to 54.1% in April, up from 50.1% in the previous month.

Year-on-year change in England and Scotland also increased, to 10% and 17.8% respectively, but fell back in Wales from 9.7% in March to 9% in April.

London continued to dominate the scene in England, with annual inflation of 14% pushing the average price of a home in the capital above 320,000.

The typical house in England now costs 216,707, while in Northern Ireland prices have hit 228,208. Prices in Wales and Scotland increased to 162,170 and 155,516 respectively in April.

Financial analyst Global Insight said that while the DCLG data is in contrast to a recent stream showing the housing market coming off the boil, it should be borne in mind that the department tends to provide lagging evidence on house prices as it calculates its index from when mortgages are completed.

More up-to-date data for May is available from the http://money.guardian.co.uk/houseprices/story/0,,2097352,00.html and Nationwide and indicates that house prices are now beginning to lose momentum.

Howard Archer, an economist at Global Insight, said: “It does appear overall that the housing market is starting to come off the boil as demand is increasingly pressurised by the rising affordability pressures stemming from higher interest rates, modest real disposable income growth and elevated house prices.

“Furthermore, interest rates seem set to rise by a further 25 basis points to 5.75% before long, which will heighten affordability pressures. In addition, the very real possibility that interest rates could reach 6.0% before the end of the year is likely to act as a significant deterrent to many potential house buyers.”

Bidding war?

That phrase could be both a prediction and a prayer now that BEA Systems has rejected a $6.7 billion takeover bid by Oracle Corp., which hopes to make the San Jose software vendor its 36th acquisition over the past three years.

Since 2005, Oracle has acquired 35 companies for a bit over $31 billion, according to an estimate by Bloomberg News. This acquisition strategy reflects the belief of Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison that software industry consolidation is necessary to create a company of sufficient scale and breadth to become the one-stop shop for corporate software systems.

BEA makes middleware, products that help software applications run more smoothly on top of databases, while Oracle markets business management and database software.

BEA’s board formally rejected Oracle’s $17-per-share offer in a letter made public Friday, saying their firm “is worth substantially more to Oracle, to others and, more importantly, to our shareholders.”

That rejection, coupled with other developments - such as BEA’s largest shareholder, corporate raider Carl Icahn, who urged rejection of the Oracle offer and solicitation of a better bid - suggest that these are just the opening gambits in a corporate mating ritual that might involve other software powers like the German firm SAP, or New York tech colossus IBM.

But Mike Gilpin, an industry analyst with Forrester Research, said other than BEA’s board and shareholders, a constituency that could be hoping for a different buyer would be the firm’s roughly 3,800 employees, who must realize that getting purchased by distant SAP or IBM probably would mean fewer job cuts than an acquisition by nearby Oracle.

“I’m not saying they’d be happy,” Gilpin said of BEA’s employees. “But they would be happier.”

Gilpin said he had been skeptical of Ellison’s strategy because heretofore software mergers, certainly on this scale, had been rare. “Amazingly, they’ve done remarkably well,” he said of Oracle. Gilpin attributed much of its success to Oracle President Charles Phillips Jr., whose skill in managing the integration has complemented Ellison’s boldness in charting the strategy.

Although Oracle would like to be considered daring, its strategy of growth-by-acquisition has generated a backlash in corporate software circles, where it is sometimes called a bolt-on company, according to former Silicon Valley public relations guru Alan Kelly, whose clients once included Ellison.

“A bolt-on is when you buy it rather than build it yourself,” said Kelly, who created Plays2run.com, a do-it-yourself online business strategy center.

Kelly said that, until recently, Oracle’s bolt-on label has stood in stark contrast to the designed-and-built-here strategy of SAP, the German software firm that is Oracle’s chief rival in the corporate software space.

But earlier in the week, SAP announced its own $6.8 billion acquisition of another corporate software vendor, Business Objects, based in Paris and San Jose, and that uncharacteristic acquisition had the effect of helping to inoculate Oracle against the bolt-on charge, Kelly said. Now, were SAP to jump into a bidding war for BEA, it would make Ellison seem prescient for being first to realize that growth-through-acquisition may be the new software industry way, he said.

SAP could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for IBM, rumored to be another potential bidder, said the company does not comment on competitors or rumors.

Oracle’s Phillips said Friday that his firm hopes to prevail.

“We believe our all-cash offer provides the best value for BEA’s shareholders and the best home for BEA’s employees and customers,” Phillips said.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs analysts Sarah Friar and Derek Bingham said they believe Oracle can bid more than $20 per share, or about $8 billion, and still benefit from buying BEA.

David Hilal, an analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., issued a research note Friday predicting that Oracle would sweeten its $17-per-share bid.

BEA shares soared above Oracle’s bid Friday, jumping $5.20, or 38 percent, to finish at $18.82.

Oracle shares lost 2 cents to close at $22.44 Friday.

Chronicle news services contributed to this report. E-mail Tom Abate at tabate@sfchronicle.com.