Fifty-nine U.S. senators have asked European antitrust regulators to speed up their investigation into Oracle's planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems, due to Sun's "deteriorating financial condition."
The senators, led by Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, called on the European Commission to "expedite" its investigation into the $7.4 billion acquisition, in a letter sent Tuesday.
[ InfoWorld's Bill Snyder says Europe is putting a dishonest squeeze play on Oracle over MySQL. | Relive Sun Microsystems' rise and fall in InfoWorld's slideshow. | Neil McAllister traces who wins if Oracle loses MySQL. ]
"The deal between Oracle and Sun was announced in April and seven months have gone by without a resolution," Kerry said in a statement. "Continued delay of the European Commission's decision on clearance threatens thousands of American jobs, so we felt compelled to ask for a speedy resolution."
Sun reported a net loss of $120 million for the first quarter of its 2010 fiscal year, with the quarter ending on Sept. 27. The company reported a net loss of $2.2 billion for its 2009 fiscal year, compared to a net loss of $403 million for its 2008 fiscal year.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has said that Sun is losing $100 million per month as it waits for the deal to close.
Unless European antitrust regulators wrap up their investigation soon, there could be layoffs at Sun, the senators wrote. The U.S. Department of Justice concluded its own antitrust investigation in August without finding any problems with the deal, the letter said.
European regulators have concerns over competition in the database market, but Sun's open-source MySQL serves a tiny portion of the European market, the letter said. Oracle is the largest vendor of proprietary database software.
"Unfortunately, Sun Microsystems' financial position has become more precarious and the Commission's inquiry has continued," the letter said. "Some have raised concerns over the company's ability to continue to employ its thousands of workers. Accordingly, we respectfully request the European Commission complete its investigation of this transaction as quickly as possible."
Earlier this month, the European Commission issued a formal "statement of objections" over the deal, saying it would hurt competition in the database market. That statement doesn't necessarily mean the European Commission will block the deal.
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Download now »I think that San Francisco is Nancy's district. She is just doing her job as the job losses would effect her constituents, and she seems to be doing a good job! I guess they haven't tried influencing Oracle. Maybe they can get the car czar or bank czar (or even make a new technology czar) to club Oracle into giving up a concession or two!
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18 Recommendations
Isn't it Oracle that is delaying the deal and threatening these jobs, what does the EU have to do with it. The EU has stated that Oracle hasn't offered any concessions or offered alternative solutions except to simply give in to Oracle. Why are these Senators so concerned about job losses all of a sudden. There have been many bankruptcies that they didn’t care about that had a greater impact than this, for instance Circuit City reportedly layed off more employees (30,000) than Sun currently employees. What I did notice was that Nancy Pelosi initially announced her concern for the deal and suddenly all of these other Senators are very concerned. Could this just have been an easy way to get a potential favor, by signing some meaningless letter?