| By Maureen O'Gara |
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| December 10, 2009 07:15 AM EST |
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12,235 |
Oh, lookee there. Reuters says that the Justice Department, which cleared the Oracle-Sun merger this summer and publicly snapped – in diplomatic language of course – at the European Commission when it objected, is sending a representative to the sub rosa hearing Thursday and Friday at which Oracle is supposed to try to convince the regulator to let it swallow Sun MySQL and all.
If the EC keeps going in the direction it’s been going – and it’s more than likely to – maybe it can manage to provoke an international incident out of the merger of two American companies like it nearly did when it blocked the GE-Honeywell merger, still a sore spot in certain circles, circles that may not be too thrilled with the way it’s treated two other American icons the last few years.
If the EC’s antitrust czarina Neelie Kroes didn’t like the DOJ publicly looking askance at her statement of objections and 59% of the US Senate writing her a letter how’s she gonna take to a DOJ observer in the room?
According to Reuters Oracle is also bringing folks from Ericsson of Sweden, Vodafone of Great Britain, the British Atomic Weapons Agency; the British National Health Service; Sabre Holdings of the United States; Banco Bilbao of Spain, Vizcaya Argentaria, Oracle’s UK User Group and Carnegie Mellon University.
Microsoft, SAP and MySQL creator Monty Widenius will be appearing on the other side of the aisle in support of the EC.
If the EC refuses to give the merger safe passage Oracle is likely to try to fight its decision in the European courts.
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