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The European Commission has given software firm Oracle the green light to go ahead with its takeover of rival PeopleSoft.
The move clears one of the last hurdles in Oracle's $7.7bn (£4.2bn) bid for PeopleSoft – a move that would create one of the largest providers of HR software in the world.
The EU's competition commissioner Mario Monti had been investigating the takeover and its potential impact on the market since November last year.
His decision to let the deal proceed, without any conditions, comes after competition regulators in the US came to the same conclusion.
Monti had originally expressed concern that Oracle's takeover of PeopleSoft would leave only two main players in the market for complex business software – Oracle and SAP.
But the commission said: "After a detailed probe, the commission has concluded that there is an absence of sufficient evidence of competitive harm especially in view of the fact that large and complex companies... have other suppliers to serve their needs beside Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP."
