14 DAY TRIAL // The Sun Oracle deal is dragging on with no end in sight. Oracle is sticking to its guns, while the EU is not letting go of its objections. The software giant has now asked EU regulators for a hearing set for December 10 to argue its case for buying Sun, according to Reuters citing people close to the matter. This comes after Oracle asked for more time to prepare.
While the fate of the deal isn't any clearer, things are moving towards some sort of closure. Oracle announced its intention to buy Sun Microsystems, which had been struggling for the last couple of years, for $7.4 billion in spring. The deal was approved by Sun's shareholders and later on by the US Department of Justice after a prolonged investigation. Things didn't go so smoothly in Europe, where the EU's Competition Comission extended its investigation of the deal with concerns over the open-source MySQL database system.
MySQL had become a big competitor for some of Oracle's own database offerings especially on the lower end and the EU is worried that competition in the market would diminish if the deal were to go through. Oracle has expressed its support for MySQL and complained on several occasions about the investigation which was initially scheduled to last until January 19, 2010. Oracle claimed that the investigation was costing Sun about $100 million every month.
Despite all this, the investigation was extended to January 27, 2010, after Oracle asked for more time and missed the deadline initially put forward by the EU for presenting its case. This will now happen on December 10. Sun has been badly hit by the prolonged investigation, as the uncertain state of the deal is making most customers skittish about the company. Sun's hardware business was the hardest hit as people were unsure how will Oracle, traditionally a software company, handle the unit. Sun also had to cut 3,000 jobs recently.