I can't see any way that Larry can acquire EMC without having his shareholders revolt. After they bailed out his personal investment in Pillar Data, this would basically be admitting what actually happened.
Well, it wasn't much of a bail out: Pillar was acquired with 100% earn-out -- in the words of the SEC filing on the acquisition[1] "we will not make any upfront payments to Pillar Data or any Pillar Data stockholders, including Mr. Ellison, or option holders upon the closing of the acquisition." (Pillar owed Ellison $544M at the time of the acquisition, and even that was converted into a slice of the earn-out.) The decision to buy Pillar wasn't without controversy (and indeed, there was a shareholder suit over it[2]), but that was also a much cozier situation than EMC. So the shareholders might revolt -- though seeing the Axis-like power of a combined Oracle/EMC, they also might not...
While I am happy to defer to someone who I think is a bit more connected through previous relationships to what's happening at Oracle, I will say the one thing I take issue with is the way they phrased the earn-out. It's based on net revenue, not income. This is Larry we're talking about, there's plenty of ways to make the revenue of Pillar look good enough to get paid, even if it's not REALLY making any money. Sell a database, get a "free" Pillar system. But hey, the Pillar system is what you really paid for, we gave you the licensing for free!
