DealZone

Boeing defense chief Dennis Muilenburg startled many this week when he told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit he would not rule out the possibility of a large-scale merger. Is he sending up a trial balloon to gauge the Pentagon’s reaction? *View article *Read more at the Aerospace and Defense Summit

Two of the world’s biggest private equity firms, KKR and TPG, are potentially interested in Foster’s wine business, but they are not currently working on rival bids, sources told Reuters.  Earlier this week Foster’s rejected a $2.5 billion offer for its wine business as too cheap. *View article

The SEC is investigating investment advisory firms that channel investors’ money into hedge funds, the Wall Street Journal reported. *View WSJ article

The NYT’s Deal Professor blog takes a look at G3 Capital’s deal for Burger King. Apparently the investment firm wants its deal like Burger King’s customers want their meals, right now. *View NYT article

Did Oracle hire former HP CEO Mark Hurd because of his great management skills, or is there more to the story? A DailyFinance article looks into whether Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is after HP itself. *View DailyFinance article

What’s another $200 million between rival bidders? Less than three hours after Dell matched HP’s $1.8 billion bid for data storage specialist 3PAR, HP upped the ante to an even $2 billion. The HP offer shakes out to $30 per share. 3PAR shares were up another 20 percent to $31.29 in early trading, according to Reuters. *View article*

FT blogger Gwen Robinson wondered how 3PAR became the target of such an intense bidding war and suggested it may be “simply a throwback to those crazed acquisitive days of the dotcom boom.” *View article*

In another software play, HP is rumored to be a potential bidder for security software maker ArcSight Inc. According to the Wall Street Journal, bidders, including Oracle and HP, could pay up to $1.5 billion for the company. Other ArcSight competitors could include EMC, IBM and CA Inc. *View article*

Having spent more than $42 billion to buy about 60 companies, Larry Ellison’s Oracle has set something of a daunting standard for merger activity in the business software industry. So while SAP’s plan to buy smaller business software maker Sybase for $5.8 billion may not roil markets, it could certainly shake up things in an already  busy infotech sector.

With Sybase, SAP gets a boost in mobile technology, but will also end up with a big database business that provides steady revenues but little else on which SAP can grow its business.

The database chunk is by far the bigger earner for Sybase, with the mobile aps business accounting for only a little over a quarter of annual revenue, so it could make an attractive business for SAP to hive off. Breakingviews columnist Robert Cyran points out that keeping a hand in the database world could also prove awkward for SAP as it exacerbates competitive friction with its allies, Microsoft and IBM.

On Wednesday, Oracle closed its multi-billion dollar takeover of Sun. A few bullet points from the Thomson Reuters data team:

· Following approval from European anti-trust officials, Oracle’s $5.8 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems was completed today. The transaction is 3rd largest software deal globally since the Tech Boom and the 10th largest on record.

· Since 2004, Oracle has been the most active acquirer in the software sector based on advisory fees. Oracle was the acquirer on 5 of the largest 10 software deals since the Tech Boom.

Oracle has won unconditional European Union approval for its $7 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems, a month after offering public pledges to sooth regulatory concerns. The Commission’s decision averts a split with the U.S. Department of Justice, which approved the deal in August. While authorities in China and Russia have yet to approve the deal, it is still seen reshaping the high-tech landscape, with Oracle, the world’s No. 2 business software maker, moving into the hardware business. Sun is the top player in the $17 billion high-end computer-server market.

Oracle’s play-nice promise in December to keep the market open for others to make storage engine software for Sun’s MySQL database and to boost investment in the unit came after the European Commission launched an in-depth investigation of the deal. Oracle also pledged to set up a separate customer advisory board of MySQL users.

Florian Mueller, a spokesman for the founder of MySQL, Michael Widenius, who is strongly opposed to the deal, said the European Union executive’s decision was wrong. “It’s not based on hard facts… It should not serve as the basis for decisions taken by other regulators because it would set an awful precedent for merger control in connection with open source and a variety of other IT business models,” he said. Opponents could yet challenge the deal in court, but with both the U.S. and EU now giving it their blessing, they might want to petition a court further east.

In an October 11 research note titled “Castles in the Air, Downgrading to Perform,” Oppenheimer & Co analyst Ittai Kidron throws cold water on expectations that Brocade will be bought anytime soon.

The speculation began last week, after The Wall Street Journal reported that Brocade was “quietly” shopping itself, and that Oracle and Hewlett-Packard could be potential buyers.

Later, Reuters reported more details: Brocade had in fact been trying to sell itself for several weeks, and HP had kicked the tires — going as far as to begin due diligence — but stopped short of making an offer for the company because they were only interested in certain assets. Then, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison publicly said his company wasn’t about to buy Brocade. Apart from HP and Brocade, analysts have speculated that IBM and Juniper Networks could also be interested.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the data storage equipment maker wants to sell itself. While Oracle and Hewlett-Packard are potential bidders, a deal is not imminent and Brocade might not even go ahead with a sale, according to the report.

Just a couple weeks ago, Brocade said it expected to turn the corner in 2010, with revenue exceeding Wall Street expectations. Better late than never. It reported a loss for the third quarter and a decline in revenue from the second quarter, and saw its stock punished by traders who had been expecting a turnaround sooner.

Brocade also said in September that its integration of Foundry Networks, acquired last year, was going as planned, and its sales partnership with IBM was beginning to yield more benefit. Just the kind of thing you’d want to hear if you were a Brocade shareholder contemplating a sale. Tech services mergers have been very hot of late, and the potential buyers — particularly Oracle — are not exactly poor or deal-wary.

Oracle Corp’s (ORCL.O) acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA.O) could be delayed by up to four months if the European Commission’s antitrust authority decide to launch an investigation into the $7.4bn deal. US authorities cleared the sale last week, but the EC is concerned over Oracle gaining ownership of the MySQL database product, sources familiar with the situation tell Reuters.

For this and the rest of the latest deals news from Reuters, click here.

And here’s a round-up of other deals news reported in the press on Wednesday:

* The Cosmen-CVC Capital Partners consortium bidding for bus and train operator National Express (NEX.L) is looking for ways to make its offer more attractive, the Financial Times said.

The Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal blog wrote a post yesterday about how Sun Microsystems, which has agreed to be acquired by Oracle, now looks “less dumb” than before. In the days after IBM walked away from the negotiating table about two weeks ago, the media was rife with comparisons between Sun and Yahoo, which bungled up a $47.5 billion buyout offer from Microsoft last year.

But now we all know why Sun was driving such a hard bargain with IBM, as Deal Journal says. It actually had some negotiating leverage because Oracle was already waiting in the wings.

Sources told me yesterday that Oracle began courting Sun way back in end-February/beginning-March. Initially, the business enterprise software maker sent feelers to Sun about buying just its software business. After all, Sun’s Java programming language and Solaris operating system work very closely with Oracle products.