Oracle's Reach for Sun Slowed by European Regulators

by Brenon Daly

Having gotten the all clear on this side of the Atlantic, Oracle (ORCL) is now waiting for the EU to sign off on its pending purchase of Sun Microsystems (JAVA). And the company will have to wait a bit longer. The European Commission has a deadline of September 3 to determine if the deal would violate antitrust measures. If the body decides that it does, a subsequent probe could potentially drag on into 2010.

Granted, there’s a lot at stake in Larry Ellison’s plan to use the acquisition of Sun to turn Oracle into a systems vendor, as opposed to a company that just sells software. (Provided the transaction goes through, Oracle will be in a position to hawk Solaris and Linux servers, all running its own database, middleware and application software on the boxes.) And, as the largest tech buy since Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) purchased EDS in May 2008, Oracle’s $7.4bn reach for Sun is clearly not nickel-and-dime M&A.

But the pace of the review by regulators is absolutely glacial. Consider this fact: It took Oracle just two months to fully negotiate its purchase of Sun, according to proxy material. (Sun chairman Scott McNealy spoke with Ellison about a possible deal in late February; the companies announced the transaction on April 20.) More than twice that amount of time has elapsed since Oracle announced the deal – and regulators in Europe are still mulling it over.

Comments

[jack dee]

Europe is simply sick of be beaten by American companies in the high tech arena.
And the courts are being used to compete and make careers.

Great if you want to get re-elected , make a fortune in public speaking, or a rich living advising companies on EU competition law..

I sold out my java positions as soon Larry showed up, shame really Java / Sunw was a great slow trade, buy and sell a few times a year with the trends ...

2009 Aug 26 07:49 PM

[JakeTheInsider]

Reading the last paragraph, you are apparently not very familiar with the sequence of events in this M&A. Do a bit of googling and you will find that Oracle did not file the proposed merger/acquisition with EU regulators until July 30. By my calendar that's less than one month ago. Or are you seriously suggesting that governments should start investigating future acquisitions based on newspaper stories?

If you're desperate to write stories on this topic, how about one on WHY Oracle waited so long to file.

2009 Aug 27 11:13 PM

[John2345]

I'll be selling all of my Oracle stock if the deal to purchase Sun actually goes through.

2009 Aug 29 11:21 AM