Broadcom Accelerating VMware Acquisition Approval Process

Broadcom, the Silicon Valley chipmaker, is stepping on the gas to get approval for its $61 billion VMware acquisition.

The company reportedly will try to fast-track antitrust approval from the European Union. People “familiar with the matter” told Reuters that Broadcom will cite competition from cloud giants AWS, Microsoft and Google in its quest. In other words, those companies are already so big, approving this deal won’t create more of a competitive unbalance.

Based on that fact, one of the people Reuters cited suggested that the European Commission surely wouldn’t need to go to a second phase of approval. That usually takes four months to complete.

To get to phase two, “there has to be a real competition problem – horizontal, vertical, foreclosure risk – and I think we can show those risks don’t really exist in this case,” the source told Reuters.

To this point, there has been no pursuit of EU approval by Broadcom, the source said.

VMware Acquisition by Broadcom Almost a Record-Breaker

Broadcom first announced the acquisition of cloud and virtualization giant VMware in May. If regulators give it the green light, it will be one of the biggest tech mergers in history.

The deal would expand the depth of critical infrastructure solutions that each company can provide to enterprise customers. For Broadcom, it’s a big boost to its software portfolio. Company execs predict revenue from infrastructure software sales will jump from 23% of the business to 49% once it closes. Expect VMware to keep its brand name, incorporating assets from the Broadcom Software Group.

This acquisition follows on Broadcom’s significant acquisitions of Symantec and CA Technologies over the past few years. When announcing the VMware deal, the company only said it expected it to close sometime during its 2023 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 31, 2022.