Oracle Buys Sun Microsystems

Oracle and Sun announced that Oracle will acquire Sun's stock by the end of the summer, paying $9.40 per share. Oracle expects in the first year of the purchase to add $1.5 billion in adjusted profits with at least 15 cents more per share. They're also expecting $2 billion more in profits the second year.

Particularly interesting for Oracle, at least according to a first statement of the parties, are the Sun freebies Java and Solaris. In their joint statement, they declared that the "Sun Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle database" and that they can now "optimize the Oracle database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris." Oracle CEO Larry Ellison can now claim that "Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system." What will happen with open source MySQL, which Sun bought over a year ago, is anyone's guess.

The announcement is the first tangible result of the weeks-long takeovergame. The Wall Street Journal had reported that IBM was in talks with Sun, but had broken them off due to the high price set by Sun. No official statement ensued. Oracle was then brought up again in connection with a Red Hat takeover, again with no definite statement of facts to prove it.