Oracle tangles with feds over PeopleSoft acquisition

PeopleSoft, the maker of customer-relationship and business-financial software, got some help from the U.S. government as it tried fending off a hostile takeover bid from Oracle, the major power in enterprise software.

In 2004, the feds filed suit and claimed Oracle would kill competition and violate antitrust laws by acquiring PeopleSoft. A federal judge found that U.S. officials had failed to prove their case.

In December 2004, Oracle announced that it had agreed to pay $10 billion for PeopleSoft. In the aftermath, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison (pictured above in Washington D.C., with a friend) may have wanted PeopleSoft, but he wasn't soft on its people. He laid off more than half of the company's 11,000 employees a month after taking control.