DOJ stumped for EU approval of Oracle-Sun deal

Summary: A Wikileaks cable highlights how U.S. regulators were worried about the EU sinking Oracle?s acquisition of Sun.

A cable leaked by Wikileaks indicates that U.S. Department of Justice was stumping for Oracle?s acquisition of Sun and urged EU officials to approve the deal.

The cable, highlighted by IT News in Australia, highlights how U.S. government officials were worried about Sun?s unraveling as the purchase was mired in regulator limbo.

The cable?s money quote was:

DOJ/Antitrust views this matter as a high priority. Its senior officials and investigative staff are currently engaging productively and intensely with their DG COMP counterparts, and are in close touch with Oracle and Sun, in the hopes of preventing a divergent outcome.

In other words, the EU was raising concerns about Oracle?s open source plans for MySQL, but the DOJ wanted to move on the deal. If the DOJ approved the Oracle-Sun deal and the EU shot it down, it would have been an embarrassment.

As we now know, the EU approved the deal and Sun became Oracle?s hardware engine for its Exadata line.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

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Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

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