Assurance on jobs as Sun deal gets nod

Published on Saturday 19 December 2009 19:08

ORACLE is expected to shed some administration jobs in Scotland but avoid a major cull following a proposed £4.5 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems.

European Commission antitrust regulators are expected to give the merger conditional approval in January after accepting assurances Oracle is seeking to dispel competition fears.

Both American technology giants have a significant presence in Scotland but former Scottish chief of Oracle, Edward Chance, said each performs fundamentally different functions.

He said: "My only concern would potentially be some admin staff that could be shared once the merger goes through, but I do not anticipate much change to the Oracle employee levels.

"Also, if previous acquisitions (by Oracle] are anything to go by, they will firstly streamline the two office locations, as they won't need two within 20 miles of one another."

Oracle's Edinburgh head office has desks for around 90 people with other staff and consultants based around Scotland working for its international function. Back-office staff are already offshore.

In contrast, Sun employs around 500 people at its plant in Linlithgow, West Lothian, where manufacturing ceased a year ago, but which still provides a range of vital support services.

Oracle announced its takeover plans back in April. Delays have cost Sun 60million in losses a month on top of a reported loss of 1.32bn for the year ending 30 June.

The Commission was concerned that Oracle's acquisition of Sun's open source database program MySQL, used by Facebook and Amazon, and a rival to IBM and Microsoft's offerings, would lead to higher prices and less choice for consumers. But last Monday the Commission said Oracle had committed to "a series of undertakings" which amounted to "an important new element to be taken into account in the ongoing proceedings".