Oracle plays hardball with Euro regulators

'Pretty damn confident' of approval for deal

Oracle remains confident that the European Union will cave in and abandon objections to its proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems.

The firm gave evidence in Brussels yesterday, including support from several customers who believe that MySQL is not a serious competitor to Oracle's core database products.

Thomas Vinje, one of Oracle's lawyers at Clifford Chance, said the firm was "pretty damn confident" that the deal would be approved.

He said: "There is a mountain of consistent evidence favouring every one of our key propositions... If we're successful on any one of them, the case must go away," according to Bloomberg.

Vijne was speaking after the first of a two day hearing - Oracle is back before regulators today, along with Microsoft and SAP who both object to the $7.2bn takeover.

Oracle has echoed complaints made by Intel that the EC has been selective in choosing evidence. The company complains that several of its customers were wrongly painted as opponents of the deal by the EC.

Statements from Vodafone, McAfee and General Electric all supported Oracle's view that it is not a direct competitor to MySQL, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Commission remains concerned that the two are - or could in future be - effective competitors, which would leave little reason for Oracle to continue to support the open source database. ®