SAP AG, the German business-management software maker, plans to turn itself into a European corporation to enable faster decision-making as it focuses on grabbing database customers from Oracle Corp.

SAP will ask shareholders to approve a change of its legal status from an Aktiengesellschaft to a Societas Europaea, or SE, at next year's annual meeting, it said yesterday. One aim is to speed up decisions on the supervisory board, said a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

The SE structure, already adopted by companies including BASF SE, Allianz SE and Puma SE, was created by the European Commission to simplify regulatory and legal requirements for companies with subsidiaries in more than one European country. Previously, multinationals had to follow each of the EU members' own legal system where they had a subsidiary.