Sun Microsystems has decided that it will reduce its workforce by 3,000 jobs, or 10 percent of all its employees, because of several delays in its acquisition by Oracle Corp. Even after Oracle completes the acquisition of Sun, though, the company, which has been struggling with declining revenues, expects even more job reductions to occur.
The acquisition of Sun by Oracle was expected to close by the summer, but the deal has hit a snag in the form of European regulators that have been unwilling to approve the merger over fears that the new colossal company would snuff out competition. Sun’s …read more

Antitrust regulators have had IBM in their sights for a while amidst concerns that the computer giant may squelch too much of its competition and hold a monopoly in the mainframe market. However, many analysts have begun to point out that IBM’s so-called monopoly on the mainframe market might actually only exist in small subsets of the market.
According to analysts, the part of the mainframe market that antitrust regulators have accused IBM of monopolizing makes up only a small portion of the wider server market, a playing field in which there is now plenty of competition. Oracle’s impending acquisition of …read more

Software giant Oracle’s takeover of Sun Microsystems may not go so smoothly in Europe, where the European Commission has stated that the combination of Oracle and Sun would end up eliminating the growth of Sun’s free corporate database program. The European Commission has decided to continue investigating the merger, even though the Justice Department has already approved it.
While U.S. regulators’ main concern involved Oracle’s power in the marketplace, the questions surrounding open-source software have not been as popular on this side of the Atlantic. This would not be the first merger that the U.S. and the European Commission have butt …read more

On the heels of its $4.7 billion acquisition by Oracle, Sun Microsystems has posted a significant quarterly loss as sales fell to disappointing levels. The last quarter probably marks Sun’s last full quarter as an independent company before it is absorbed entirely by software giant Oracle.
 
In a report filed yesterday, Sun reported a loss in the quarter ended June 30, which is the company’s fiscal fourth quarter, of 20 cents per share. This compares to Sun’s profit of 11 cents per share, or $88 million, in the same quarter last year, highlighting the negative impact that the recession has had …read more

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has decided decrease his annual salary to $1 for the year 2010, according to Oracle’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The move will shave exactly $999,999 off of Ellison’s income compared to this year, but fortunately for Ellison, the world’s fourth-wealthiest man, his base salary only accounts for about 1.2 percent of his total earnings.
Other massively wealthy executives have paved the way in the field of $1 base salary reductions, such as Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. According to Oracle’s filing with the SEC, Ellison’s company wants …read more

In one of the biggest business moves of 2009, Oracle agreed to takeover Sun Microsystems. The deal is estimated to be worth almost $7.5 billion. Sun Microsystems, a company in the computer server industry, had been linked to IBM — but those negotiations broke off and Oracle jumped in.
However, the official Oracle takeover of Sun will have to wait a little bit longer. The United States Department of Justice is requesting further information about the transaction. One of the areas that is under the microscope is what Oracle will do with Java, an extremely popular programming language.
Despite the requests for …read more

Oracle, one of the largest software makers in the world, made investors smile on Tuesday. Even though the company had year-over-year drops in both profit and sales, Oracle was able to beat most expectations.
In their last quarter, most experts believed the company would have sales of about $6.5 billion. Instead, Oracle had $6.9 billion in sales. Compared to last year, Oracle’s sales were down about 5%.
In 2008, this quarter saw Oracle profit approximately $2 billion. In 2009, that number was down to about $1.9 billion. However, that was still better than expectations.
The main reasons why Oracle says they saw their …read more

After eight years of intense legal conflict, a judge has finally thrown out the lawsuit against Oracle CEO Larry Ellison of insider trading and deceiving investors. According to the judge, Susan Illston, lawyers failed to provide enough conclusive evidence that any of this ever went on, leaving the judge no choice but to dismiss the charges.
The lawsuit arose when Oracle missed an earnings report back in 2001 and blamed it on an economic slump. Investors quickly rose to blame the nonexistent earnings forecast on problems with software, bad accounting, and poor judgment, things that the Oracle leadership were aware of …read more

For the last few months, Sun Microsystems had appeared to be on the verge of being purchased by IBM. On Monday, many industry experts were shocked to learn that Oracle had hopped over IBM and has reportedly bought Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion.
Sun Microsystems had made it clear that they were for sale. Their sales had been slumping and the future didn’t appear bright for the company. However, they were a hot commodity because of the large industry reach, recognizable brand and an array of impressive customers.
The deal for Oracle now makes them a much more powerful company. Some industry …read more

Today, Oracle announced a plan to buyback $8 billion worth of stock in addition to an existing plan to buyback $9.3 billion of stock.
No timeline was given for the $17 billion deal and shares of Oracle rose 6.7 percent today.  Trading activity was pretty normal, just about 400,000 shares above the three-month average of 42.1 million shares per day.
I must admit, news of this nearly doubled buyback shocked me a bit.  In today’s market, where everyone is hoarding cash, here comes Oracle announcing a huge deal to buyback common stock.  If the board believed the stock was overvalued they wouldn’t buy it back and if the …read more