FAQ: Regulatory processes

In which places has this transaction still not been cleared?

We will make announcement in the news/blog section of this website whenever any definitive decisions of major importance have been announced. When all major markets have decided, we will deactivate the petition form and add a note on the outcome to every page of this website. That is extremely unlikely to be the case before the middle of January 2010 and the process may also take until the end of January or even be taken into February in one or more places.

Why wouldn't the unconditional clearance of the transaction by the US Department of Justice be sufficient?

Competition law relates to markets, not to countries of origin. Foreign companies have to respect US rules when doing business in the US, and US companies have to comply with foreign laws when doing business elsewhere.

Why could regulators outside the US arrive at different conclusions than the US Department of Justice even though the database market is a worldwide one?

Generally, merger control rules are very similar everywhere, but there are also differences.

Furthermore, every regulator will take the situation in the global market into consideration but access to information and evidence is different. Open source software is more popular outside the US than in the US as far as use in large enterprises and governmental bodies is concerned.

There can also be a difference due to varying procedural stages. In the US, MySQL was considered a non-issue in the early part of the process, so there wasn't a very detailed and lengthy investigation of some of the related issues. In the EU and some other jurisdictions, MySQL became the primary concern and gave rise to in-depth investigations.