{"id":1992,"date":"2009-11-10T17:41:44","date_gmt":"2009-11-10T22:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=1992"},"modified":"2009-11-10T17:41:44","modified_gmt":"2009-11-10T22:41:44","slug":"e-u-antitrust-navel-gazers-target-oraclesun-agreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/1992\/e-u-antitrust-navel-gazers-target-oraclesun-agreement\/","title":{"rendered":"E.U. Antitrust Navel-Gazers Target Oracle\/Sun Agreement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the worldwide economic downturn drags on, why are European regulators arbitrarily stifling Oracle&#8217;s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, causing harm to the latter&#8217;s business?\u00a0 One would think we&#8217;d want to encourage beneficial mergers during these lean times. right?<\/p>\n<p>Apparently not in the sclerotic European Commission (EC).\u00a0 After notoriously blocking such other synergistic mergers as General Electric and Honeywell, <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB20001424052748703808904574526072224895160.html#mod=todays_us_marketplace\" target=\"_blank\">EC bean-counters are formally objecting<\/a> to the Oracle\/Sun agreement.\u00a0 Even the suddenly-activist Obama Justice Department had already approved the deal and said it wouldn&#8217;t harm competition, but it apparently troubles the European status quo too much for Euro tastes.\u00a0 As a result, Sun&#8217;s sales have plummeted some 25%, and Oracle could ultimately be forced to abandon the deal and pay a $260 million breakup penalty. Oracle&#8217;s software focus doesn&#8217;t even compete with Sun in the consumer marketplace, and the agreement was reached back in April.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, EC bureaucrats navel-gaze, and consumers again pay the price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the worldwide economic downturn drags on, why are European regulators arbitrarily stifling Oracle&#8217;s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, causing harm to the latter&#8217;s business?\u00a0 One would think we&#8217;d want to encourage beneficial mergers during these lean times. right? Apparently not in the sclerotic European Commission (EC).\u00a0 After notoriously blocking such other synergistic mergers as General [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[466,19,469,467,468],"class_list":["post-1992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-antitrust","tag-economy","tag-european-commission","tag-oracle","tag-sun-microsystems"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1993,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992\/revisions\/1993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}