While many companies simply choose not to comment on acquisition rumors, Oracle Corp. has came out to deny a recent report that it’s looking at buying the global consultancy firm Accenture Plc.

It would have been one of the technology industry’s biggest deals ever. Last week, The Register’s Paul Kunert reported Oracle had begun hiring “global specialists to explore the feasibility” of buying Accenture. Kunert cited unnamed sources in his report as saying Oracle was looking at buying the company “lock, stock and barrel,” with a view to using its consulting and professional services to get more of its customers onto the Oracle Cloud.

Any deal would have been massive. Accenture has a market cap of $77.5 billion, which would make an acquisition even more expensive than Dell Inc.’s $67 billion mega buy of EMC Corp. last year.

But unfortunately for any Accenture shareholders hopeful of a premium on that price tag, Oracle over the weekend came out to categorically deny any interest in an acquisition. “The Accenture rumor is completely untrue,” Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger told Business Insider. “Never even considered it. Completely made up.”

Indeed, Analysts had previously told SiliconANGLE the deal was highly unlikely to happen. The enormous price tag alone made it improbable, and the deal never really made sense from a business perspective either. As Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc. explained, Oracle made the same mistake of expanding its consulting arm back in the 1990s, only for that strategy to backfire as the company lost customers to rival firm SAP SE.

“I’d be surprised if Oracle repeated the same mistake of the old era, especially with [Executive Chairman] Larry [Ellison, pictured] still being around,” Mueller said.

Image: Oracle PR/Flickr