14 DAY TRIAL // The Oracle-Sun deal made another big step toward being finalized after the US Department of Justice has announced it is approving the deal and that all of the anti-trust concerns have been settled. Oracle announced its intentions to buy Sun Microsystems several months ago for $7.4 billion. The deal has passed a few hurdles but still has to get the approval of the European Commission.
The DOJ approved the deal four months after Oracle made public its intentions of buying the enterprise software and hardware giant Sun Microsystems. Sun had been looking to sell well before the deal was announced and was at some point in advanced talks with IBM with Big Blue offering $7 billion for the company. That deal eventually crumpled but Oracle later closed negotiations at $7.4 billion.
The merger means several key assets and technologies for Oracle, like the MySQL database management system, which has been competing with its own offerings on the lower end for years. With the acquisition Oracle is also better positioned to fight main rival IBM by offering a complete hardware and software package, something it hasn't been able to do so far.
The acquisition was approved last month by Sun shareholders with a majority vote though in the absence of Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz and Chairman Scott McNealy. The $9.50 per share deal was favored by 62 percent of the shareholders. However, it was still pending approval from the DOJ after the government agency extended the review and investigation period in June with apparent concerns over Java licensing.
But even after the shareholder vote and the DOJ approval the deal could still be overturned as it is also under scrutiny in Europe where the EU Competition Commission investigation hasn't been closed yet. The commission's main concerns are over the Java networking components, some “middleware” software and some data base technologies. Most experts, though, believe there will be no problems in Europe either and the deal should get the approval soon.