Business software giant Oracle Corp and Siebel Systems Inc have received US regulatory clearance for their proposed 5.85-billion-dollar merger and now await approval in Europe.
The two companies said they had received the green light from the US Department of Justice for their alliance, a bid by Oracle to gain an edge in its rivalry with Germany's SAP. "We are extremely pleased with the DoJ's decision and we believe we are on track to close the deal in the first quarter of next year," Oracle spokesman Bob Wynne said in a statement late Tuesday. The companies still need to get anti-trust clearance from the European Union's executive commission for their merger, which was announced in September.
The deal would give Oracle - the world's second largest software group after Microsoft but behind SAP in business management applications - a strong base in an area of software known as customer-relationship management.