Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- SAS Institute Inc., the world’s biggest closely held software company, will remain private and independent, its chief executive officer said.

“Most people running a public company would give anything to be private right now,” CEO James Goodnight said in an interview this week. “The word is out that we aren’t interested in being acquired.”

SAS, based in Cary, North Carolina, has more than $1 billion in cash and reported sales last year of $2.26 billion. It is the largest independent maker of so-called business intelligence programs, which spot patterns amid vast stores of data.

Goodnight has followed his go-it-alone approach even as Oracle Corp.,SAP AG and International Business Machines Corp. have spent $15 billion buying up some of SAS’s biggest rivals. In 2007, Redwood City, California-based Oracle bought Hyperion Solutions Corp. for $3.3 billion. Within a year, SAP announced its $6.8 billion acquisition of Business Objects SA and IBM snapped up Cognos Inc. for $4.9 billion.

Goodnight said he turned down two offers from a company two years ago; he didn’t identify the prospective buyer.

“I love to see a competitor bought by somebody else,” said Goodnight, 66, who co-founded SAS in 1976 and owns two- thirds of the company. “It really screws them up for at least a year.”

Market Gainers

SAS’s rivals have increased their share of the $8.8 billion business-intelligence and analytics market through acquisitions.

SAP, the world’s biggest maker of business-management software, increased its share more than sevenfold to 23.8 percent in 2008, according to researcher Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Connecticut. Before buying Business Objects that year, Walldorf, Germany-based SAP held 3.3 percent.

SAS was the No. 2 in the market with 14.6 percent, tying with Oracle, according to Gartner. IBM was fourth with 11.3 percent, up from zero in 2007.

In July, IBM announced plans to buy another SAS rival, SPSS Inc., for about $1.2 billion. When the deal closes this year, Armonk, New York-based IBM will have programs that help companies predict sales trends and credit risks. The company already owns software that lets users discern historical patterns and collect data from applications scattered throughout an organization.

Adding SPSS will round out IBM’s product portfolio, making it the only company in the business-intelligence market that competes against SAS in every product category, said Gareth Herschel, an Atlanta-based researcher for Gartner.

No Retirement

Goodnight disagreed with that assessment, saying SAS has many more business-intelligence products than IBM. SAS sells more than 200 programs for specific industries, such as pharmaceuticals, retailers and banks. HSBC Holdings PLC uses SAS software to detect credit-card fraud, for example, and Kohl’s Corp. uses it to set prices and determine which merchandise will sell best in specific stores, he said.

Ian Colley, a spokesman for IBM, declined to comment.

Goodnight and Executive Vice President John Sall, 61, own all of the company they co-founded. Goodnight’s net worth is $8.7 billion, making him No. 33 on Forbes’s 2008 list of Richest Americans. He has no plans to retire.

“As long as I feel I’m doing a good job and making a contribution to the company, I will stay on as the CEO,” Goodnight said. “The minute I don’t think I’m being effective as a leader, I will replace myself.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Rochelle Garner in San Francisco at rgarner4@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 2, 2009 09:40 EDT