Broadcom in talks to acquire VMware

[Pescado_Rojo 19583]

Like the thread title says...

[Vegas64 713]

Great value. Deal hunting season is here and it makes complete sense. Tons of M&A will happen in the next 6 to 12 months I think.

Market seems to be reacting positively, which is interesting because Broadcom has a reputation for acquiring companies and then ruining them.

To be fair, VMware had peaked anyways, IMO.

[Blotto 24011]

I always wondered if Gelsinger would have any interest now that he's running Intel with their emphasis on growing share in the data center segment. But building fabs in the US and Europe aint cheap either so there's only so much money to go around I guess. 

[Hozz 1035]

Yes they ruined Symantec.

[Laxtonto 13269]

1 minute ago, Hozz said:

Yes they ruined Symantec.

Please don't screw up VM Ware...

[Vegas64 713]

Lots of people are looking at this as a barometer of Biden's Anti-trust stance, according to the NYT:

A new era of ‘populist antitrust’

Broadcom’s expected $60 billion bid to buy VMware, which would be one of the largest deals of 2022, could raise a number of questions. The biggest one: Will the Biden administration, which has vowed to fight corporate concentration, allow a deal to go forward?

The U.S.’s top deal cops, the Federal Trade Commission head Lina Khan and the Justice Department’s Jonathan Kanter, have been pushing for the government to have more authority to block corporate deals. But criticism is mounting that antitrust efforts have gone too far. Earlier this week, Larry Summers, a Harvard University professor and former top Obama adviser, tweeted that a new era of “populist antitrust policy” could lead to a U.S. economy that is “more inflationary and less resilient.”

In the past, a deal like Broadcom’s potential acquisition of VMware would not have been an issue. The two companies are not direct competitors. Instead, the acquisition in deal terms is closer to what is often called a vertical integration — when one company buys another in a related industry. Horizontal deals, where the two companies are direct rivals, have traditionally been the ones that the government has policed, fearing that fewer competitors in one market would lead to higher prices.

Government officials are signaling that vertical and other deals are problematic as well. “By myopically treating transactions as vertical or horizontal, we may miss important details that a broader perspective can provide,” F.T.C. Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter said last year. In addition, the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is reportedly pushing for a vote by early summer on legislation that he and others argue will address the way Big Tech has exploited gaps in antitrust regulations to eliminate competition.

Summers argues the Biden administration is dangerously headed back to failed policies of the past. He tweeted that the administration’s policy statements “better reflect legal doctrines of the 1960s than economic understandings of the last two decades.” Summers said attacking deals just because they are big ignores the benefits that can come from larger, more efficient companies. What’s more, Summers said using antitrust regulation to limit layoffs ends up embedding higher costs into the system. “There are real risks,” Summers tweeted. “Policies that attack bigness can easily be inflationary if they prevent the exploitation of economies of scale or limit superstar firms.”