Oracle Raises $4.5 Billion To Fund Sun Acquisition

Oracle this week said it is selling new investment notes to the tune of $4.5 billion in order to have extra cash on hand for its acquisition of Sun Microsystems and other potential acquisitions.

Oracle in April said it plans to acquire Sun in a $7.4 billion deal, announced shortly after an earlier bid by IBM to acquire Sun fell through.

The net proceeds from the sale of the notes will be used for general corporate purposes and future acquisitions, as well as Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun.

Oracle has priced a sale of $1.5 billion of 3.750-percent notes due 2014, $1.75 billion of 5.000-percent notes due 2019, and $1.25 billion of 6.125-percent notes due 2039, with the offering expected to settle on July 8.

Oracle expects its Sun acquisition to close sometime during the summer.

Sun earlier said that it has planned a special stockholders' meeting for July 16 to vote on the adoption of the merger agreement entered into by Sun and Oracle.

Oracle is a company in a constant acquisition mode.

The company last month acquired server virtualization technology developer Virtual Iron Software in a move to boost its software application business and, in the process, its competitiveness in relation to Microsoft.

Oracle this year alone has acquired mValent, a leading provider of application configuration management solutions, and Conformia, a developer of product and process life-cycle management software for managing drug design, development and transfer to production.

In addition, its acquisition of Relsys, a provider of drug safety, risk management and analytics applications for the health sciences industry, is still pending.