British competition regulator begins investigation into Broadcom's $61 billion acquisition of VMware

CTOnews.com, January 25 (Xinhua)-- Broadcom announced in May 2022 the acquisition of cloud service provider and virtual machine software giant VMware for $61 billion (currently about 413.58 billion yuan) in cash or stock. However, the deal is under multi-party antitrust investigation.

According to the latest news from Reuters, the British competition regulator said on Wednesday that it had begun the first phase of its investigation into Broadcom's $61 billion acquisition of VMware.

CTOnews.com had previously reported that the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said in November that it was investigating whether the deal between the two US-listed companies would seriously damage competition in the UK, adding that it had to make a decision by March 22.

Broadcom's deal with VMware is one of the world's biggest deals in 2022, marking the chipmaker's attempt to diversify into enterprise software.

Broadcom, the most acquisitive semiconductor company, has strategically used mergers to drive its growth in recent years. It bought CA Technologies for $18.9 billion in 2018 and Symantec for $10.7 billion in 2019.

Broadcom and VMware didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.