Larry Ellison Pleads While Sun Bleeds

Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ:ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison apparently just couldn't sit around any longer and watch his prey -- in this case, Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA) -- suffer.

Ellison, who said last month that every month the $7.4 billion acquisition is delayed amounts to a $100 million loss for Sun, visited Brussels yesterday for a meeting with European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes about the deal, according to a Bloomberg report.

Bloomberg, which cites people familiar with the deal, didn't have much detail on the meeting other than to say Ellison tried to convince Kroes that an Oracle-Sun combo shouldn't raise antitrust concerns.

The story comes on the heels of a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Sun Tuesday afternoon detailing a plan to lay off up to 3,000 workers, or about 10% of its workforce. The company places the blame on the EC, pointing to "the delay in the closing of the acquisition" as the reason for the cuts.

The European antitrust regulator on Sept. 3 began reviewing the Oracle-Sun deal and is set to rule on it by Jan. 19, which has got to be looking pretty distant to the two companies. The EC said it was concerned about Oracle's position in the database market post-closing, as Sun owns open-source database managment software company MySQL. Earlier this week, tech groups urged the EC to block the deal on these grounds, while MySQL founder Monty Widenius asked Oracle to sell the company, which was acquired by Sun last year, to a third party. - Olaf de Senerpont Domis

Comments

[BeachRider:]

EC doesn't understand that MySQL doesn't have a lot of asset-value in the real world (I am still amazed that JAVA spent $1Bn on it). If they are trying to preserve an independent MySQL capability, they will certainly kill it, instead. Oracle wouldn't really miss it, either.

EC is directly causing MySQL to lose staff and become less relevant. What I don't understand is why Larry Ellison isn't worried about erosion of value in the rest of JAVA...

Nov 02 03:46 PM