Exactly as predicted
Exactly as I predicted 2 days ago:
Next stop on the line is the European commission competition review of the merger.
Spanner meet works, works meet spanner.
American national security bods on the US government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) have asked Qualcomm to delay tomorrow’s vote on Broadcom’s proposed $117bn (£84.7bn) takeover. With a timing to make even the most imaginative soap opera writer slap a palm to face and mutter "steady on now, …
Exactly as I predicted 2 days ago:
Next stop on the line is the European commission competition review of the merger.
Spanner meet works, works meet spanner.
And I think I made similar noises myself a while back. Qualcom is an MVP (player) for the US military so the deal won't happen unless the men in uniform are happy they can get their suppliers to do everything they want. Broadcom has increasingly been acting like a private equity vehicle loaded up with debt and looking for a quick profit. Difficult to the see the generals and the spooks liking that.
And that's what made me think (along with the article's title) that the actual National Security Agency was objecting to it as Broadcom might make it more difficult for the NSA to backdoor military comms equipment, which is something that they do in case someone who we're bombing is using our shit. It happens more frequently than you'd probably think.
The CFIUS is more an economic protection agency than anything to do with actual security so I doubt it really has all that much to do with that, and more to do with ensuring that US business criminals reap the most reward from selling out to the Chinese.
Hello:
From Gareth Corfield on 04/12/2017:
"Both firms specialise in making system-on-chip processors. A merger would see the consolidated company controlling a large portion of the world's silicon supply."
This is the real issue at hand.
It would be sheer stupidity to allow this to happen.
Because before you realise it, a "large portion" becomes "all".
But then, in today's world ...
Cheers.
controlling a large portion of the world's silicon supply
Clever. Sand is our second-most-consumed natural resource, after all.
Forget chips. First you get the sand, then you get the money.