3. Hock Tan, Broadcom
Broadcom’s pending VMware acquisition has hit a temporary snag.
The European Commission, the competition branch of the European Union, will indeed launch a full-scale antitrust investigation into the $61 billion deal.
It’s a delay Broadcom was working to avoid. Broadcom had hoped regulators would give the company an early thumbs-up for the VMware acquisition based on the dominating presence of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud in Europe. The company said it would offer a competitive option to those firms.
It seems Broadcom didn’t quite quash regulators’ fears. As such, sources close to the matter told Reuters that a four-month-long investigation will take place. The fear is that Broadcom will raise prices and make it harder for customers to move off VMware platforms, in terms of both money and time.
Hock Tan, Broadcom’s CEO, has made waves by addressing the pricing issue in two blogs so far.
“Following the close of the transaction, we will invest in and innovate VMware’s products so we can sell even more of them and grow the VMware business within enterprises, deepening and expanding the footprint instead of potentially raising prices,” Tan wrote.
Read more our reporting about how Tan said his company is making progress.
