The European Commission (EC) has formally approved Broadcom’s $61 billion bid for virtualisation software giant VMware, with the caveat that Broadcom fulfills certain ongoing commitments around access and interoperability.
The deal, which is one of the biggest tech acquisitions of all time, was the subject of regulatory scrutiny when it was announced in May last year. Europe revealed plans for an in-depth probe in December citing competition concerns, while the UK followed suit in March.
VMware is in trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission who believes that it would have missed its earnings targets numerous times since May 2019 if it had not shifted “tens of millions of dollars” in revenue into future quarters and “obscured” a slowdown in demand for its product from investors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a “cease and desist order” to force VMware to stop the practice of “discretionary holds” where a company withholds reporting all of its revenue until the following quarter so that its sales teams are given a “buffer” to meet future targets.
The SEC wrote: “VMware misleadingly reassured investors on quarterly earnings calls and in earnings-related press releases and other earnings materials … that its revenue growth was meeting expectations, when revenue actually would not have met expectations or would have missed expectations by a larger amount without VMware’s continual net reductions in its discretionary backlog.”
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