BRUSSELS, BELGIUM– The European Commission approved US chipmaker Broadcom’s planned $61 billion takeover of cloud computing firm VMware on Wednesday, conditional on the company fulfilling certain commitments to ease competition concerns.
The massive deal had raised concerns about competition, prompting probes by antitrust watchdogs in the European Union and Britain.
The commission said its in-depth investigation found that the transaction, as originally proposed, “would harm competition in the worldwide market for the supply” of Fiber Channel Host-Bus Adapters (FC HBAs).
As a remedy, Broadcom offered interoperability commitments to rival Marvell Technology and any other potential competition, the EU’s executive arm said.
The company also guaranteed access to the source code for all of its current and future FC HBA drivers.
The commission concluded that “the proposed acquisition, as modified by the commitments, would no longer raise competition concerns”.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decided in March to deepen its probe into the mega-merger.
Broadcom is seeking to expand into the software market to boost its server business and has already acquired two complementary firms, CA Technology and Symantec.
