Broadcom’s $61 billion VMware deal wins conditional EU antitrust OK

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – U.S. chipmaker Broadcom (NASDAQ:) secured EU antitrust approval on Wednesday for its $61 billion proposed acquisition of cloud computing firm VMware (NYSE:) after offering remedies to help rival Marvell (NASDAQ:) Technology.

The deal, Broadcom’s largest ever, will help the chipmaker diversify into enterprise software.

Broadcom offered Marvell and other rivals interoperability commitments related to its Fibre Channel Host-Bus Adapters (FC HBAs), a kind of storage adapters, the European Commission said, confirming a Reuters story last month.

Marvell and other rivals will have “guaranteed access to the interoperability Application Programming Interfaces as well as to the materials, tools and technical support necessary for the development and certification of third-party FC HBAs”, the EU competition enforcer said.

Marvell and other rivals will also have guaranteed access to the source code for all of Broadcom’s current and future FC HBA drivers through an irrevocable open source license.

“The commitments offered by Broadcom will enable its only rival Marvell, to continue competing on equal footing and ensure a similar protection for any future entrants,” EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the UK competition agency are also examining the deal.

“We continue to make progress with our various regulatory filings around the world, having received legal merger clearance in Australia, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, South Africa, and Taiwan, and foreign investment control clearance in all necessary jurisdictions,” Broadcom said in a statement.