The Department of Justice will need more time to give the go-ahead to Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems.
Oracle said in April it would pay $7.4 billion for Sun, and the DoJ had 30 days to review the deal – a period that ended on Friday.
But the DoJ has asked for more time to review the takeover. Oracle said that the deal was still likely to go through.
In a statement, Oracle said: “We’ve had a very good dialogue with the Department of Justice and we were almost able to resolve everything before the Second Request deadline. All that’s left is one narrow issue about the way rights to Java are licensed that is never going to get in the way of the deal. I fully expect that the investigation will end soon and not delay the closing of the deal this summer.”
Java is licensed by many vendors, some of which, like IBM compete with Oracle in specific marketplaces.
The new US administration’s antitrust chief, Christine Varney, said in May that the DoJ will particularly scrutinize high tech takeovers.
Sun Microsystems shareholders are set to vote on the deal on July the 16th.
