15 July 2003 Regulators in the US have given the green light to PeopleSoft’s acquisition of JD Edwards, whose stockholders have until midnight on Thursday to tender their shares.

Oracle, which had been trying to de-rail the deal with its own hostile bid for PeopleSoft, conceded it would now have a longer wait if it is to persuade investors to back its proposal. With the DoJ announcement, the company extended its offer period beyond the original deadline of Friday this week until 15 August.

Oracle will also have to re-consider how much it will have to pay for the combined entity. The company has already increased its all-cash bid for PeopleSoft from $5.1 billion to $6.3 billion, giving investors a 29% premium. Now, to achieve its ambitions it will have to offer about $7.3 billion, according to analysis carried out by securities firm US Bancorp Piper Jaffray.

While PeopleSoft and JD Edwards have been given the go ahead by the DoJ, Oracle itself faces an unspecified delay to its acquisition plans after the anti-trust regulators in late June issued a ‘Second Request’ for information as part of their investigation into how Oracle’s strength in the database market could influence its market position in enterprise applications and vice versa.