Exclusive: Broadcom set to win EU nod for $61 bln VMware deal, sources say

(Adds Broadcom and VMware shares in paragraphs 1, 4, UK and FTC probes in paragraphs 7-9)

CONSTELLATION BRANDS, INC.

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, June 12 (Reuters) - U.S. chipmaker Broadcom is set to gain conditional EU antitrust approval for its $61 billion proposed acquisition of cloud computing firm VMware, people familiar with the matter said, sending its shares up by almost 5%.

The European Commission's clearance is tied to remedies relating to Broadcom's interoperability with rivals that would address competition concerns, the people said.

Both the EU antitrust watchdog, which is scheduled to decide on the deal by July 17, and Broadcom declined to comment.

Broadcom shares rose as much as 5% in early trade and were up 4.9% at 1700 GMT. VMware was up 2.7%.

One of the remedies focuses on Fibre Channel Host-Bus Adapters (FC HBAs) and is targeted at rival Marvell Technology , one of the people said. Marvell Technology did not respond to a request for comment.

FC HBAs are storage adapters that connect servers to storage located outside the server on a storage-area network using the fiber channel protocol, typically through a switch. Broadcom is a leading supplier of FC HBAs.

Broadcom's other key hurdle is in Britain where the British competition agency will next month announce its provisional findings about the deal and possible remedies if required.

Companies have become more wary about the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) after it blocked Microsoft's Activision deal while the EU cleared it.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is also investigating Broadcom's VMware acquisition.

Broadcom, which supplies chips used in data centers for networking and specialized chips that speed up AI work, announced the deal, its biggest, last year to diversify into enterprise software. (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Conor Humphries)

Broadcom, VMware extend deadline to complete acquisition by 90 days

Software and semiconductor maker Broadcom and its acquisition target VMware have agreed to give themselves another 90 days to complete the $61 billion acquisition they announced on May 26, 2022.  

A regulatory filing by enterprise cloud vendor VMware showed that both the companies had delivered a mutual notice to extend the final date of the merger to twelve months from the day the deal was announced.

“Together with VMware, we have agreed to extend the Outside Date in our merger agreement to May 26, 2023, which is common for a transaction of this size. We are continuing to make progress with regulatory authorities around the world,” a Broadcom spokesperson said.

The companies’ initial merger agreement set a deadline (the “outside date”) of February 26, 2023, for consummation of the deal, with a total of three extensions of three months each allowed at either company’s request.

Broadcom expects to close the deal by Oct. 30, 2023, the end of its fiscal year, the spokesperson said, without offering any other reason for the extension.

The delays could be due to clearances from anti-trust and competition watchdogs of the US, UK and the European Union, including the US Federal Trade Commission, media reports have speculated. VMware shareholders already voted to accept the deal in November 2022.

Shortly after the deal was announced, VMware customers had raised concerns, citing Broadcom’s less than stellar track record with prior acquisitions such as that of CA Technologies in 2018 and Symantec in 2019.  

With the prior acquisitions, Broadcom had raised prices while decreasing support and stopping investment in innovation, according to Tracy Woo, senior analyst at Forrester. Broadcom and VMware have since tried to reassure customers.

On the other hand, some experts argue that it makes sense for Broadcom to buy VMware, and that the company has the potential to develop enterprise and telco technologies that could broaden its appeal to users in both sectors.

Copyright © 2023 IDG Communications, Inc.

Twitter Is a Far-Right Social Network

Twitter has long been described, even by its most ardent users, as a hellsite. But under Elon Musk, Twitter has evolved into a platform that is indistinguishable from the wastelands of alternative social-media sites such as Truth Social and Parler. It is now a right-wing social network.

In December, I argued that if we are to judge Musk strictly by his actions as Twitter’s owner, it is accurate to call him a far-right activist. As a public figure, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the right’s culture war against progressivism—which he refers to as “the woke mind virus”—and his $44 billion Twitter purchase can easily be seen as an explicitly political act to advance this specific ideology. Now the site itself has unquestionably transformed under his leadership into an alternative social-media platform—one that offers a haven to far-right influencers and advances the interests, prejudices, and conspiracy theories of the right wing of American politics.

Read: Elon Musk is a far-right activist

Earlier today, NBC News reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is slated to kick off his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event with Musk. Twitter, quite literally, is a launch pad for right-wing political leaders. Also today, The Daily Wire, the conservative-media juggernaut that is home to Ben Shapiro as well as the political commentators Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, who are known for arguing against trans rights, announced it would bring its entire slate of podcasts to Twitter starting next week. And earlier this month, the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced that he would take his prime-time-show format—a dog-whistling broadcast style known for its fearmongering and bigotry—to Musk’s platform.

Both Carlson and certain Daily Wire hosts have been deplatformed elsewhere—Carlson, of course, only recently lost his sinecure on cable, and Walsh had his popular YouTube channel demonetized over his transphobic commentary. And although they reportedly haven’t brokered official deals with the platform, Carlson and The Daily Wire will likely make use of Twitter’s new subscription features and ad-revenue sharing to monetize their audiences.

This should feel familiar. Twitter is essentially following the playbook of platforms like Rumble, which used to be the go-tos for canceled and deplatformed right-wingers seeking a soft landing and the promise of revenue. Like Rumble, which pivoted from a struggling YouTube alternative into a full-fledged far-right platform in the late 2010s, Twitter appears to be dipping into the well of popular right-wing shock jocks as a way to revive the financially adrift website.

Read: What if Rumble is the future of the social web?

The move makes sense. In just a few months, Musk has actively worked to elevate a particular right-wing, anti-woke ideology. He has reinstated legions of accounts that were previously banned for violating Twitter’s rules and has emboldened trolls, white-nationalist accounts, and January 6 defendants. Musk’s own rhetoric has moved from trolling to dog whistling to outright conspiracy peddling, and it has intensified in recent months, culminating in his recent anti-Semitic remarks about George Soros. A stroll through Musk’s replies on the site reveals the extent to which one of the richest men in the world spends his time replying to far-right influencers and nodding in approval to their racist memes.

A social-media platform will always reflect the values of its owners, and Twitter’s credo is nearly identical to that of the lesser-known alt-tech sites. Despite appearing to cave to the demands of autocratic governments and censoring links to competing platforms, Musk has attempted to position himself as a free-speech absolutist, similar to his right-wing-activist peers. Before shutting down after a failed acquisition by Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), Parler billed itself as the “free-speech social platform.” Truth Social, a website backed in part by Donald Trump, says it encourages “an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology.” This language is indistinguishable from the way that Carlson spoke of Musk’s Twitter, arguing that “there aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech,” and that the site is “the last big one remaining in the world.” If it acts like a right-wing website and markets itself as a right-wing website, it just might be a right-wing website.

Twitter has so fully assumed the role of a far-right platform that it might be killing its competitors. When Parler shut down in April, its parent company noted that “no reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more.” Left unspoken is the reason: Twitter has become a right-wing echo chamber.

If Musk weren’t too preoccupied lapping up approval from trolls, reactionaries, and Dogecoin enthusiasts—a few of the constituencies left on his site that still seem to adore him—the Parler statement should worry him. Right-wing alt-tech platforms may attract investors and a flood of indignant new users with persecution complexes, but they are, ultimately, bad businesses. That’s precisely because they lack the one thing that fuels far-right discourse: a way to own the libs. A culture war is no fun if there’s no actual conflict, and although some journalists and pundit diehards remain, many of Twitter’s prolific users are posting less and on different platforms. Social-media platforms that cater to the right’s ideology eventually become tired and predictable—the result of the same loud people shaking their fist at digital clouds. History has shown us that there are plenty of ways a social network can die, but the quickest way is boredom.