European antitrust regulators reportedly are
preparing to come out with their objections to Oracle Corp.'s (NASDAQ:ORCL) proposed $7.4 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA), according to several reports.
As the European Commission said when announcing its investigation of the deal, its concerns center around MySQL, an open-source database management business acquired by Sun last year.
Oracle execs last month reportedly met with European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes (pictured) to try and convince her that absorbing MySQL would pose no antitrust issues (The Deal Pipeline subscribers can read more about that
here), but the pleas apparently fell on deaf ears.
The Financial Times, citing a person close to the process, reported late Tuesday that the EC was close to issuing a formal objection to the deal. At the very least, this will slow the progress of the already delayed merger. And, as
Oracle chief Larry Ellison said in September, the delay is costing Sun $100 million a month.
- Olaf de Senerpont Domis
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