Broadcom looks for EU approval of VMware takeover Broadcom has begun the process of getting European Union approval for its proposed $61 billion takeover of cloud and virtualization biz VMware, which the company hopes to close within its current fiscal year. The takeover was officially notified to the European Commission for antitrust scrutiny on November 15, according to an …
I understand Broadcom's track record, and I agree customers are wise to be concerned. However, how is this an EU issue?
If Broadcom wants to write a $61B check and then destroy it, isn't that their problem? They wrote the check so they can make those decisions. If they make the wrong decisions and lose their customers, well they were theirs to lose in the first place. The EU shouldn't have any regulatory say in to the viability of Broadcom's business model post transaction.
I believe there is a public interest question that needs to be addressed, perhaps not in the same league as an obvious 'monopoly' but just because something can be done it does not follow logically that it should.
There may be an eventual impact on all those VMWare services and installation currently 'in-flight' that will need support and updates etc.
EU and other government bureaucracy could well rely upon VMWare having to replace it likely would put additional dents in budgets.
The same consideration (I hope?) would be given to a local government garbage collection contractor being taken over by a national recycling centre operator who had a dubious reputation; if the local contractor is a significantly large enough part of the contracted services there could be avoidable negative impact, financial or otherwise, on the local government and/or community if the service standards fell or even failed..
With the world population near 8 billion and other climate and political happenings things do not occur in isolation, there are far reaching impacts.
VMWare isn't like twitter, a fool can buy and destroy twitter - no big deal, people can spout stuff lots of other places... such as right here. Nothing much actually depends on twitter's existence. VMWare is unique and things that you most certainly DO rely on, depend on it, there are no viable alternatives.
It's a stretch to call it anti-trust... but there is clearly a public interest in keeping Broadcom from doing what Broadcom is going to do to VMWware.
CEO reports to the Board. The Board reports to the Shareholders*.
If the 'public interest' is not what management is pursuing, then why don't the Shareholders fire management via their control of the Board? That's how this all works, right? Shareholders expect to have a positive return on their investment, and they expect the Board to install management which achieves that objective.
(*) Shareholders = Regular people who invest in 401k plans & IRAs, trying to grow the value of their retirement fund. Retirees looking for dividend paying stocks. Probably a lot of the gainfully employed techies who read El Reg. Most Shareholders don't even realize their generic Mutual Fund retirement investment is actually placed with companies like Broadcom, and the success of these companies is directly tied to their personal financial success.
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