Oracle hasn't done enough to calm the concerns of EU regulators over its take over of Sun Microsystems, and now a filing in Russia has cast some uncertainty over whether Oracle is stepping back from the deal.
Oracle filed a request with Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service to withdraw its competition filing for the take over. It's a bit of an odd filing not just for the content, but also because the FAS forward-dated its approval yesterday to today. (Hallowe'en homage to Rocky Horror Picture Show? Let's do the Time Warp?)
The FT, on its excellent Alphaville business blog, has translated the filing, and Miles Johnson provides this analysis:
Of course, either way, withdrawing a competition filing from Russia might not signal that the Sun deal is about to unravel. Oracle might have felt it no longer needed regulatory approval on the deal in Russia for whatever reason. And it might have withdrawn the application with a view to re-submitting it.
Whatever the case, there are bound to be some very nervous investors out there.
However, a commenter points out a story at PC World magazine's site in which Oracle provides details about how it plans to develop some of Sun's technologies. That's not really the kind of talk from a company looking to walk away from a take over.
Oracle didn't return calls from the FT before they hit publish. There has been no clarification. With questions of whether Oracle will be forced to spin off MySQL to gain EU approval and this mysterious filing, nervous investors won't be any calmer.
