Broadcom braced for full EU investigation into $61B VMware buyout

Broadcom may be facing an in-depth investigation into its $61 billion takeover of VMware by EU competition watchdogs, dashing the corporation's earlier hopes that its buyout would not meet any major regulatory hurdles. According to reports, a full-scale probe into Broadcom’s planned buy of the cloud and virtualization biz is …

[elsergiovolador]

Care

If these organisations like CMA really cared about the market and consumers, then they would lobby the government for making such mergers outright illegal (so it would saved tax payer money - no more silly investigations and room for potential under the table deals).

Furthermore they would lobby government to create laws ordering giants like Amazon or Google to split and even split subsidiaries like AWS.

These consolidations are edge cases of capitalism that have not been regulated. They create market distortions and exploitation.

Organisations like CMA are just a cheap plaster and symptom of poor / lack of regulation.

[Phil Kingston]

Re: Care

Do CMA, and more generally, the UK have any skin in the game anymore? If Broadcom want to buy VMware are they going to be change their mind when they get an email from some civil servant on a small island off Europe?

[steviebuk]

Re: Care

They would if the whole of the EU decided that no one is allowed to use VMWare anymore. Whether the EU would be able to legally do that I'm not sure.

[BOFH in Training]

Re: Care

I think any country, regardless big or small can do that.

It's up to the company to ignore the objection and still proceed, at which point they may lose access to that country(in terms of future business) / get hit by penalties.

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction

"The combination of Broadcom and VMware is about enabling enterprises to accelerate innovation and expand choice by addressing their most complex technology challenges in this multi-cloud era. crazy bags full of money."

FTFY

[Lil Endian]

Multi-cloud Era?

If the cloud's the web, WTF is the multi-cloud? Fluffy LANs held together by increasing idiocy over the internet, hosted by earnest snot monsters?

Cumulativedumbass & Ciriusmucous?

[ElRegioLPL]

A little bit funny they expected a $61 billion (61,000,000,000 Yankee Doodle Dollars) purchase to go through with no issues at all, really