EU Clears Oracle-Sun Deal
The European Commission Thursday cleared Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, saying it believes the deal would not "significantly impede" competition. The commission, the European Union's regulatory arm, said it had concerns that combining Sun's open source MySQL database product with Oracle's database products could harm competition in that market. The Justice Department approved the Oracle-Sun deal without conditions in August.
"I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned," EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement. "Oracle's acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products." The commission said its investigation, which began in September, "showed that although MySQL and Oracle compete in certain parts of the database market, they are not close competitors in others, such as the high-end segment."
In November, Oracle defended its proposed acquisition of Sun against initial EU concerns, saying "the database market is intensely competitive with at least eight strong players." In a statement Thursday announcing the EU's "unconditional" approval of the deal, Oracle said it also "expects unconditional approval from China and Russia and intends to close the transaction shortly."
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