Tuesday April 29, 10:20 AM
Oracle buy of BEA Systems cleared by EU
BRUSSELS (Thomson Financial) - The European Commission said it has cleared business software maker Oracle Corp.'s proposed $8.5 billion acquisition of rival BEA Systems Inc.
The commission said the transaction would not significantly
impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it.
The EU executive found that the horizontal overlap between the parties' activities in the middleware software sector would not give rise to competition concerns, in particular since Oracle and BEA would not compete head-to-head.
The combined Oracle and BEA entity would face several strong competitors in the overall middleware market, such as IBM Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT - news) . and SAP AG (Xetra: 716460 - news) ., and customers would therefore find sufficient alternative suppliers.
The commission's inquiry found no risk of coordinated effects since middleware software is highly complex and prices are non-transparent as most vendors apply a variety of discount options.
|
Send Article by Email
Send Article by IM
Blog This with Y! 360
Printable View
