Oracle CEO Addresses Rumors During Speech, Plans to Hire 2,000 New Employees

From DailyTech: Acquisitions and mergers are common in the tech world and when two large companies each boasting lmany customers try to merge, you can count on scrutiny from regulators. Such was the case with the Oracle/Sun merger.

Oracle announced that it intended to purchase Sun in April 2009. The deal was met with resistance and Oracle ended up fighting to complete the purchase. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from California came out supporting the deal. The proposed merger also came under regulatory fire in Europe as well with the European Commission looking closely at the deal. Ultimately, yesterday Oracle was finally able to announce that the purchase of Sun was complete. The announcement was made by CEO Larry Ellison during a speech.

EWeek reports that Ellison also spent time discounting rumors and reports that had popped up in the media. One of the first rumors that Ellison discounted was that there were plans to layoff half of Sun's 27,600 workers.

Ellison said, "Some very bad stories in the press recently reported that we were going to do a massive layoff after the acquisition. That story is completely false. We are not planning such layoffs. Those who wrote this should be ashamed of themselves. Sun went through enough angst without having to deal with this. The truth is, we are going to hire about 2,000 new people to beef up the Sun businesses—about twice as many as we will let go."

Ellison also talked about what Oracle will do with MySQL open-source database software. He stated that Oracle would spend money on its development and retain the sales and development teams associated with the product. Oracle also has plans for integrating features into the Sun SPARC processors to make the database faster.

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