Oracle on Thursday won clearance from the US Department of Justice for its $7.4bn acquisition of Sun Microsystems, after an earlier delay in the approval process threatened to knock the deal off-course.

The US software company had originally hoped to close the deal quickly, but hit a stumbling block when the DoJ failed to give its approval at the end of an initial investigation. In an unusual move at the time, a lawyer representing Oracle said that the hold-up related to “one narrow issue” that was “never going to get in the way of the deal.”