UK competition watchdog gives Broadcom-VMware deal green light to go ahead
Broadcom has confirmed that its acquisition of virtualisation big VMware is now on observe to shut on 30 October 2023 after the proposed merger secured regulatory approval from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
The CMA printed an announcement on 21 August 2023 confirming that, consistent with its provisional judgement on the merger, there aren’t any aggressive grounds to forestall the deal going ahead.
“Even if the UK market represents a small proportion of total sales in a merger, the CMA’s job is to scrutinise deals like this thoroughly to ensure they don’t harm competition in the UK,” mentioned Richard Feasey, chair of the unbiased panel overseeing section 2 of the CMA’s inquiry into the VMware-Broadcom merger.
“In this case, having carefully considered the evidence and found no competition concerns, we have concluded the deal can go ahead.”
The assertion marks the top of a five-month probe by the UK competition watchdog into the $61bn deal, after the CMA initially raised considerations in March 2023 that if it have been to proceed unchallenged there was a chance it might hamper innovation and drive up the price of buying servers for UK companies and public sector organisations.
The CMA initially gave Broadcom 5 working days to difficulty an endeavor to handle its considerations in regards to the deal, earlier than the authority confirmed the corporate had declined this provide, prompting the CMA to examine the deal additional with a section 2 investigation.
This probe was initially meant to run till 12 September 2023, however drew to a detailed shortly after the CMA printed the provisional findings of the section 2 investigation in mid-July 2023 that said the deal doesn’t weaken competition.
Broadcom confirmed in an announcement the deal – which was first introduced in May 2022 – will now shut on the finish of October 2023, and that the corporate is within the throes of acquiring the remaining regulatory approvals wanted to achieve this.
“Broadcom continues to work constructively with regulators in other jurisdictions and is in the advanced stages of the process towards obtaining the remaining required regulatory approvals, which Broadcom believes will be received before October 30, 2023,” the corporate mentioned, in an announcement.
“Broadcom is confirmed that the combination with VMware will enhance competition in the cloud and benefit enterprise customers by giving them more choice and control over where they locate their workloads.”
In a separate assertion, a spokesperson for VMWare added: “We are pleased that Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has received clearance in the UK and continues to move forward in other jurisdictions. We expect the deal to close in Broadcom’s fiscal year 2023.”
