Oracle has received the antitrust approvals needed to acquire electronic health records company Cerner and expects to close the deal next week.
Austin, Texas-based Oracle said Wednesday that regulators including the European Union had signed off on the acquisition. Under U.S. law, companies must notify regulators of certain large acquisitions and observe a waiting period while the government reviews the deal. That waiting period expired in February for the Oracle-Cerner acquisition.
Oracle said it expects to complete the tender offer after the offer expires on Monday, June 6 at midnight Eastern Daylight Time.
The transaction is still subject to closing conditions including Kansas City, Missouri-based Cerner's stockholders tendering a majority of Cerner's outstanding shares. Oracle had extended the offer to June 6 in May, pushing back the deadline it extended to Cerner shareholders for the fourth time. As of May 9, roughly 10.1% of outstanding shares had been validly tendered.
Oracle in December had announced plans to acquire Cerner for roughly $28.3 billion through an all-cash tender offer of $95 per share.
Oracle officials said the deal would be immediately accretive to the company's earnings and shared plans to expand Cerner's business into new international markets.
In its December announcement, Oracle referred to Cerner as the company's "anchor asset" as it expands into healthcare.
Cerner comprised 24% of the EHR market for U.S. acute-care hospitals last year, coming in second to Epic Systems' 33%, according to findings from KLAS Research.
The Cerner deal will represent Oracle's largest purchase, nearly three times the roughly $10 billion that Oracle paid for enterprise software company PeopleSoft in 2005.
After the transaction closes, Oracle will make Cerner a separate business unit within the company.
"Joining Oracle as a dedicated industry business unit provides an unprecedented opportunity to accelerate our work modernizing electronic health records, improving the caregiver experience, and enabling more connected, high-quality and efficient patient care," said Dr. David Feinberg, Cerner's chief executive officer and president, in a news release.
Feinberg joined Cerner last year, after leading Google Health and Danville, Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health.
Oracle's goals for Cerner include making the system interfaces "easy-to-use" to reduce administrative burden for clinician users, Oracle Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison said in a news release.
"Cerner and Oracle have the capability to transform healthcare delivery by providing medical professionals with a new generation of healthcare information systems," Ellison said.
