U.K. competition authority provisionally clears Broadcom, VMware merger

Following an “in-depth” Phase 2 investigation, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Monday cleared Broadcom Inc.’s
AVGO,
-0.15%
$69 billion buy of VMware Inc.
VMW,
-0.37%.
In a statement, the CMA said it “provisionally found that Broadcom’s proposed purchase of the seller of software products VMware would not substantially reduce competition in the supply of server hardware components in the U.K.” The panel also concluded that the deal was unlikely to hurt innovation. EU competition authorities cleared the deal, which was first announced in May 2022, last month.  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be the last regulator to give its approval or not. Broadcom stock was up 1% in premarket trading, while VMware rose 1.6%.