EC may delay Oracle purchase of Sun

Jake Widman
Thursday, 03 September 2009 06:56

IT Industry - Strategy

Reportedly, antitrust regulators with the European Commission are considering putting the brakes on Oracle's pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The U.S. Justice Department approved the deal ten days ago, but the EC has different concerns. According to Reuters, the EC's antitrust authority doesn't like the idea of Oracle controlling Sun's MySQL database.

Reuters' sources say that the commission is considering opening a full investigation of the US$7.4 billion deal, which could take up to four months.

The action would come less than two days before the deadline for a decision.

A four-month delay would give Sun competitors, such as HP and IBM, more time to try to entice Sun customers with discounts and other incentives, as they have been doing since the deal was announced.

On August 21, the U.S. Department of Justice signed off on the deal

But that agency's primary expressed concern was over the licensing of Sun's Java software.