(Reuters) -Britain’s competition regulator said on Monday it was looking into whether U.S. chipmaker Broadcom Inc’s $61 billion acquisition of cloud computing company VMware Inc may substantially lessen competition.
The Broadcom-VMware deal, announced in May, is the second biggest globally so far this year and marks Broadcom’s attempt to diversify its business into enterprise software. The companies are also seeking European Union antitrust approval.
Tech deals have drawn intense scrutiny from regulators around the world on concerns of too much market power in the hands of a few and the possibility of bigger companies acquiring startups only to shut them down.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is inviting comments from interested parties by Dec. 6 to help it with an assessment on whether to formally launch an investigation into the Broadcom-VMware deal.
The companies did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
(Reporting by Radhika Anilkumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)