Following the much awaited regulatory approval from the European Commission last week, enterprise software maker Oracle Corp. (ORCL) successfully completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc..
The deal of $9.50 per share in cash was valued at about $7.4 billion or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt. The company said that the combination of the local entities worldwide will proceed in accordance with local laws. It was in April 2009 that Oracle agreed to buy Santa Clara, California-based Sun.
The deal received Sun shareholders' approval in July, and the U.S. Department of Justice approved it in August. However, the European Commission said on September 3 that it opened an in-depth investigation into the deal due to concerns regarding competition, especially with regard to the maintenance of MySQL as a competitive force in the database market.
However, Oracle assured the Commission that is committed to continued availability of Storage Engine APIs, non-assertion, license commitment and enhancement of MySQL in the future under the GPL. The company will maintain and periodically enhance MySQL's pluggable storage engine architecture to allow users the flexibility to choose from a portfolio of native and third party supplied storage engines. Further, Oracle will change Sun's current policy and shall not assert or threaten to assert against anyone that a third party vendor's implementations of storage engines must be released under the GPL.
MySQL is popular among web-based companies like Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG) and Facebook, which use the database management system to run their websites. Sun paid $1 billion to purchase MySQL last year.
Last week, the European Commission granted approval for the Oracle-Sun merger deal, concluding that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area, or EEA, or any substantial part of it.
The three main competitors of proprietary databases - Oracle, IBM and Microsoft - control about 85% of the database market in terms of revenue. Oracle is the market leader in proprietary databases, while Sun's MySQL database product is the leading open source database.
Oracle and Sun have been industry pioneers and close partners for more than twenty years. Oracle has already been using Solaris as the platform for its database products. Oracle can now optimize its database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris.
ORCL is currently trading at $23.65, down $0.23 or 0.96% on a volume of 12.88 million shares.
For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com
June 05, 2026 16:18 ET A busy week for economic news flow saw a slew of reports being released that reflected the trends in the U.S. labor market. In Europe, economic growth and inflation data gained attention as the European Central Bank and Bank of England head for policy session later in the month. In Asia, the monetary policy session of the Indian central bank was in focus as the country, a major oil importer, reels under the pressures of a weaker rupee and rising inflation.