Broadcom plans to pay around $61 billion for VMWare and assume around $8 billion of debt.
(Photo: Reuters)
Brussels The EU Commission has given the green light for one of the biggest tech deals to date – the $69 billion takeover of the cloud specialist VMWare by the chip group Broadcom. The European competition authorities were satisfied with the assurance that the software from VMWare will continue to work with hardware from Broadcom competitors.
Broadcom wants to expand its business beyond the semiconductor industry and announced the purchase of VMWare just over a year ago. In April, the EU Commission was still concerned that the deal could restrict competition for some hardware components.
So she came to the conclusion that with limited compatibility of VMWare software, Broadcom could marginalize chip rival Marvell. This fear was dispelled with the Broadcom commitment. Broadcom also assured a clear separation of departments so that no information from Marvell can be used in the development of its own products.
Investigations are still ongoing in the US and UK. The British competition authority CMA also fears negative consequences for competition and has initiated an in-depth review that is scheduled to run until September.
Broadcom plans to pay around $61 billion for VMWare and assume around $8 billion of debt. VMWare specializes in so-called virtual machines, with which several computer systems can run side by side on a physical server. This makes data centers, for example, more efficient because capacities can be better utilized.
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