NEW YORK: Broadcom Inc’s US$61bil (RM283.8bil) acquisition of cloud computing company VMware Inc is poised to be approved by the European Union’s merger officials, paving the way for the world’s biggest-ever takeover for a semiconductor maker.

       The European Commission will give the nod after months of negotiations with the firms, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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       During the talks, Broadcom signed up for behavioural remedies, including promises to import interoperability standards into its technologies to allow rivals to compete more fairly.

       Shares of VMware jumped as much as 7.6% to their highest since October 2021 after The Financial Times reported the expected clearance. Broadcom declined to comment.

       The deal had earlier faced heavy scrutiny, with the commission in April highlighting potential reasons to block the deal unless sufficient remedies were forthcoming.

       It warned the transaction could lead to “higher prices, lower quality and less innovation” for business customers.

       The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority will publish its own provisional findings into Broadcom’s record deal later this month, with a statutory deadline of Sept 12.

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       Stepping towards excellence

       The United Kingdom regulator, which is finding itself increasingly isolated on tech deal reviews, has taken a tougher stance on future behavioural promises by firms, such as in its probe of Microsoft Corp’s US$69bil (RM321.02bil) takeover of Activision Blizzard Inc. — Bloomberg