Oracle buyout of Sun looks worse by the day

Oracle's (ORCL) buyout of Sun Microsystems (JAVA) was conceived as a plan to combine the larger company's huge presence in enterprise software with the smaller firm's hardware and open source products technology. It was nearly a perfect marriage -- perfect enough for Oracle to pay a premium to complete the $7.9 billion deal.

The acquisition easily made it through the U.S. regulatory gauntlet, but has now become bogged down in a review by E.U. antitrust officials. Oracle's CEO, Larry Eillson, told an industry group that Sun is now losing $100 million a month, making the arrangement to buy the server company more troubled as each day passes.