Sun shareholders vote for Oracle merger | | 2009-07-19 | | | A special meeting of Sun Microsystems shareholders at Sun’s Santa Clara headquarters on Thursday voted 3 to 2 (62 percent) to approve a merger with database giant Oracle.The deal which is subject to US Justice Department approval will see Oracle acquire Sun at $9.50 per share. The main sticking point for the regulators concerns whether Oracle’s licensing of Java will be in breach of anti-trust laws, but Oracle claims the merger will be finalised by August this year.This will mark the end of the 27 year old company that developed the widely used Java programming language and Solaris server series. A casualty of the economic downturn, Sun entered talks with IBM in March 09. Negotiations with Oracle started late April.To date Oracle has been primarily a software business and it is believed the original goal was to acquire Sun’s software products separately from its hardware business, but having acquired the whole lot, Oracle are now stressing their commitment to the hardware side. CEO Larry Ellison stated in an interview "we’re definitely not going to exit the hardware business..... Sun was very successful for a very long time selling computer systems based on the Sparc chip and the Solaris operating system. Now, with the added power of integrated Oracle software, we think they can be again." | |
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