: European Commission approves Broadcom’s $61 billion acquisition of VMware

The European Commission has approved Broadcom Inc.’s AVGO acquisition of VMware Inc. VMW, sending VMware’s stock up 2.3% premarket. Broadcom, which makes chip and infrastructure software, announced the $61 billion deal to buy VMware in May 2022, but the deal has been the subject of regulatory scrutiny ever since. It has now been granted legal merger clearance in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and Taiwan, and foreign investment control clearance in all necessary jurisdictions, the company said Wednesday. Broadcom “looks forward to continuing to work constructively with regulators around the world. Broadcom is confident that when regulators conclude their review, they too will see that the combination of Broadcom and VMware will enhance competition in the cloud and benefit enterprise customers by giving them more choice and control over where they locate their workloads,” said the company. It still expects to close the deal in fiscal 2023. Broadcom’s stock was up 0.6% premarket.

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