EU halts review of Oracle bid

BRUSSELS: The European Commission has again stopped the clock on its review of Oracle's $9.4 billion bid for rival PeopleSoft to seek more information on the markets affected, the EU said.

Oracle has defended the bid at a European Commission hearing, but regulators in the United States and the European Union (EU) have challenged the move as a threat to competition for some of the software used by large business customers.

European Commission competition spokesman Tilman Lueder said the decision to suspend the EU review was taken on Wednesday. No new deadline has yet been set. The previous deadline was May 11.

"We are missing relevant information," Lueder said, adding that the details the Commission needed were on Oracle's market position in human resources and financial management software.

He said the Commission had requested the details on April 6, but had received no response by an April 12 deadline.

Lueder added that Oracle had also said the information the Commission was seeking was relevant to the probe.

The Commission has once before suspended its examination of the Oracle offer, in January, restarting it in March.

Lueder said the EU probe should be seen as separate from the U.S. Justice Department's case against the bid.

The Justice Department has argued the merger would leave only two companies from which large organisations could buy human resource and financial management software, market leader SAP of Germany and Oracle-PeopleSoft.

© Reuters