EC approves acquisition of Siebel by Oracle

The

has cleared proposed acquisition of

, a US manufacturer of customer relationship management (CRM) software, by

, the US database and application software company.

The Commission said in a statement that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it.

Oracle offers database products and application software solutions (enterprise application software) that help to automate business processes. Siebel offers CRM solutions for a variety of industry sectors.

The Commission’s investigation showed that the degree of horizontal overlap, as regards CRM software, between the activities of Oracle and Siebel would give rise to no competition concerns since the combined entity would continue to face several strong competitors in a fragmented market.

The Commission also examined possible conglomerate effects. Widely used open standards make it unlikely that the merged entity would impose restrictions on newly acquired Siebel’s CRM customers as regards their use of non-Oracle databases.

The Commission concluded that the proposed transaction would not materially affect customers’ ability to choose between competing software vendors in their purchase of CRM solutions and, therefore, that the proposed acquisition would not give rise to competition concerns.