Oracle To Meet With EU To Push Forward On Acquisition

Oracle plans to meet with EU officials December 10 to try to persuade them to approve the Sun acquisition, Reuters reported Wednesday.

The EC earlier this month issued a formal "statement of objections" to Oracle's planned $7.4 billion purchase of Sun because of issues related to how Oracle will handle Sun's open source MySQL database software. MySQL competes with Oracle's core database offering, leading to concerns that Oracle will shut down MySQL.

The meeting comes on the heels of a push by a group of U.S. lawmakers, led by Senator John Kerry, to prod the European regulators to finish their review of Oracle's Sun deal, noting that Sun's financial situation is suffering as a result of the delay.

The acquisition, to which Sun's shareholders and the U.S. government have signed off on, has been on hold since the EC in early September originally raised serious doubts about the purchase and set a deadline of early January for a ruling in the case.

Objections by the European Commission over Oracle's proposed Sun acquisition continue to drag down the value of Sun, which is suffering from new layoffs and an eroding financial picture.

Sun last month said it plans to cut up to 3,000 jobs because of the delay in the acquisition.

Meanwhile, Sun early this month quietly reported in an SEC filing that its first quarter fiscal 2010 revenue was only $2.2 billion, down 25 percent from the $3.0 billion it reported in the same quarter of last year.