The European Commission has issued regulatory approval for Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc. for $7.4 billion. Oracle announced the news Jan. 21, and revealed it also expects unconditional approval from China and Russia. It intends to close the transaction shortly. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has scheduled a live event set to take place January 27, to lay out the plans for combining the two companies and their products. Registration for the event, which will be broadcast globally, is currently underway.
Dec. 10 is the day Oracle will be presenting its case to European Union regulators on why it should be allowed to acquire Sun. The European Commission has objected to the $7 billion deal, saying the combination of Sun’s MySQL database product and Oracle’s products could hinder competition in the database market. This ruling has met with opposition from a variety of sources and galvanized letter writing campaigns urging the EU to reconsider its stance. The EC also announced on Nov. 30 that Neelie Kroes, the commission’s competition commissioner for the last five years, will be assigned to a new job. Kroes has been in charge of the investigation into Oracle’s proposed purchase of Sun.
The European Commission issued a Statement of Objections on November 9th opposing Sun’s acquisition by Oracle. According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Sun, the open-source MySQL database software is the sole issue of concern in the matter. In response, Oracle issued a statement saying the objection “reveals a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open-source dynamics” and the company “plans to vigorously oppose the Commission’s Statement of Objections as the evidence against the Commission’s position is overwhelming.”
The European Union (EU) confirmed that Oracle President Safra Catz met with EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes for negotiations over the company’s acquisition of Sun, which disclosed in a SEC filing this week that it plans on cutting up to 3,000 jobs due to the delay in the acquisition.
