Antitrust regulatory agencies of the European Union opened an investigation on Thursday to investigate the background of the Sun Microsystems acquisition by Oracle, in s USD 7 billion operation, due to concerns that the deal would threaten competition in the database market.

The delay may affect the Sun, the fourth largest maker of computer servers of the world, giving their competitors more time to win customers before the Sun to be incorporated into Oracle’s third-largest software maker in the world, analysts said.

Its rivals, Hewlett-Packard and IBM has been offering discounts and other incentives to win customers from the Sun since Oracle agreed to buy Java software maker in April this year.

Lawyers and analysts following the analysis say they expect that European regulators will approve the acquisition at the “end of the day” (someday anyway…), thus removing the last obstacle to agreement.

But they also say that Oracle will need to perhaps make concessions, including disposing of businesses with Sun MySQL software, and it is uncertain how much it will take to get European approval.

It is unlikely that the process goes beyond 19 January deadline set by the EC. This could delay the original schedule of Oracle to close the deal for several months.

Via: Folha.