Oracle prepares for Sun employee cull

Oracle has revealed that it will be making further redundancies to its Sun Microsystems workforce, with Europe and Asia expected to be the main regions affected.

An SEC filing by the software and systems vendor has revealed that it will incur somewhere between $550 million and $650 million in ‘restructuring’ charges as a result of the acquisition, which was given tin January of this year. 

The filing did not detail exactly how many positions will be impacted by the round job cuts. Overall, the Sun takeover is expected to cost the company $825 million this year.

Earlier this year, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison dismissed as "garbage" the suggestion that the company would have to axe around half of Sun’s employees in order to maintain profitability. "The truth is, we’re actually hiring 2,000 people over the next few months to beef up these businesses, and that’s about twice as many people as we’ll be laying off," he told reporters and analysts. "We’re not cutting Sun to profitability, we’re growing Sun to profitability."

In its recent third quarter financial results, Oracle president Safra Catz said that he believed Sun would make a "significant contribution" to Oracle’s profits in the following quarter, although this was before the extent of the acquisition costs was revealed.

An Oracle spokesperson was not available to comment on the forthcoming Sun redundancies. Shortly before the acquisition, loss-making Sun laid off about 3,000 of its employees.

Peter Done

Peter Done is managing director of Peninsula Business Services, the personnel and employment law consultancy he set up having already built a successful betting shop business.

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Oracle
Sun Microsystems