Mergers & Acquisitions on Ulitzer

Sun said late Tuesday that it will be forced to cut 3,000 jobs worldwide over the next 12 months because of “the delay in the closing of the acquisition of the company,” laying the blame squarely at the doorstep of the European Commission and its prolonged investigation into whether Oracle should be allowed to acquire the Sun-owned MySQL open source database.

It could be playing hardball with the EC, which some think has an interim deadline this week to decide how much longer its investigation is going to take. It could take until we’re deep into January.

In an SEC filing Sun said its board had approved the plan “to better align the company’s resources with its strategic business objectives.”

Sun expects to incur total charges of $75 - 125 million over the next several quarters, most likely the December and March quarters, in connection with the restructuring, most of which relates to severance costs.