Oracle about to seal Siebel deal?

Oracle's top executives, including big boss Larry Ellison, are planning to appear at a Jan. 18 media shindig at San Francisco City Hall.

The invitation calls it an "Oracle Fusion Strategy event," a rather ho-hum topic to draw Oracle's top brass to the city from Silicon Valley. Fusion is Oracle's ongoing effort to meld its software programs with those from PeopleSoft and other recent Oracle acquisitions.

An Oracle spokesman was mum on further details, but it's my hunch that the event, set for Jan. 18 , will mark the close of the company's the company will have more details to share about its $5.8 billion acquisition of Siebel Systems.

The deal, announced in September, has cleared anti-trust review in the U.S. and Europe. Oracle said last month it was awaiting the Securities and Exchange Commission's approval and expected to close the deal as early as mid-January expects to close the deal at the end of the month after a Siebel shareholder vote on Jan. 31.

While Ellison & Co. may highlight "synergies" of the deal, I'm waiting for answers to more pressing questions. For instance, how many people does Oracle plan to layoff? How big is the golden parachute for Siebel CEO George Shaheen? Is Oracle through with big acquistions? Will Marc Benioff of rival Salesforce.com try to ? Is Larry still trying to buy a football team?

The venue is an interesting choice too. It's a stone's throw from the federal court house where Oracle fought and won an antitrust suit over its PeopleSoft acquisition in 2004. Now, with both PeopleSoft and Siebel in his pocket, it's as if Ellison's showing up to say, "Sure, just see if you can stop me. "