EU antitrust regulators erred in clearing Broadcom’s VMware deal, cloud industry lobby says

EU antitrust regulators erred in clearing Broadcom’s VMware deal, cloud industry lobby says

By Foo Yun Chee
Publication Date: 2025-12-11 13:42:00

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, Dec 11 (Reuters) – EU antitrust regulators failed to analyse properly the risks of ​Broadcom’s $69 billion acquisition of cloud computing firm VMware ‌before clearing the deal, the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) has ‌told Europe’s second-highest court.

CISPE, which has 46 members across Europe and both Microsoft and Amazon as associate members, in July challenged the European Commission’s 2023 approval of the deal ⁠at the Luxembourg-based General ‌Court.

“The Commission committed an error in law and manifest error of assessment as regards the ‍impact of the transaction on competition on the market for server virtualisation software,” CISPE said in its December 3 submission to the ​Court seen by Reuters.

The document said the EU competition ‌watchdog’s reasoning was flawed and cited warnings from customers and industry associations about the deal.

“By failing to assess the effects of the…