Sun shareholders approve Oracle acquisition

Oracle will pay $9.50 per share to buy Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems' stockholders approved the company's acquisition by Oracle at a special shareholder meeting on Thursday.

The owners of about 62 per cent of Sun's common stock voted for the sale, which will see Oracle pay $9.50 (£5.83) per share to buy the company. In acknowledgment of the vote, Sun's stock will be taken off the market today.

The acquisition has yet to be approved by US and foreign regulatory authorities, but analysts believe the sale will go through without any objections.

In buying Sun, Oracle will transform itself from a software and services company into a hardware, software and services company in the same league with other diversified IT companies like IBM and HP.

Oracle's future competitors are not waiting for the deal to go through, however. At least one, HP, is already offering special transition deals to existing Sun customers to entice them to migrate from Sun systems to HP servers, as some customers worry that Oracle might drop Sun's hardware business or drive it into the ground after the acquisition goes through.