Oracle and Sun deal gets green light

The US Department of Justice has approved Oracle's $7.4 billion (4.4 billion) acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Sun's stockholders approved the transaction last month and now the two companies are just awaiting approval from the European Commission before the transaction can be closed.

The Oracle takeover of hardware vendor Sun has been one of the most talked about acquisitions this year.

Initially IBM was in the running to take over the struggling firm, whose dependence on high end servers had seen them bring in losses as customers opted for cheaper versions during the recession.

After talks between the companies stalled in April, software firm Oracle jumped in with an offer that was later accepted by the company.

A lot of controversy has surrounded the acquisition, as rumours Oracle had only bought Sun for its software options and was to dismantle the hardware division circled.

Oracle's chief executive Larry Ellison said in May that the company planned to keep hold of its hardware assets.

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.