EU to approve Oracle takeover - reports

The European Union is set to approve Oracle's hostile $7.7bn takeover of enterprise apps vendor PeopleSoft, according to Reuters and the Financial Times, both of which cite unnamed sources.

According to FT, European Union competition commissioner Mario Monti is expected to give the deal the green light before he steps down from the role at the end of October. Monti still has to consult the EU's national antitrust regulators but that it unlikely to sway his position, which has been moving towards approval for some months.

A US federal court has already given the takeover the green light after US regulators had initially ruled against it on competition grounds. EU lawyers reckons that same thing would happen here if the Commission blocked the bid, the FT reports.

Reuters initially carried a report along the same lines as the FT but later story quotes the Commission as saying (officially at least) that its still in talks with Oracle and nothing's been decided yet.

Approval in Europe will pave the way for the acquisition to go ahead, providing the DoJ does not appeal against the US court's decision to clear Oracle's hostile bid. There's still the little matter of gaining PeopleSoft shareholder approval after that, of course. ®

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