Following a short investigation, the European Commission (EC) has “approved unconditionally” the planned $14bn acquisition of Juniper Networks by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), stating that the “transaction would raise no competition concerns in the European Economic Area (EEA).”
The approval, which had been the subject of speculation earlier this week, is a major step forward for HPE, as it expects the Juniper Networks portfolio and team will have a transformative impact on its AI and networking capabilities – see HPE confirms $14bn deal to acquire Juniper Networks.
The EC said in this announcement that it “investigated the impact of the transaction” on the global markets for wireless LAN (WLAN) products and wireless access points (WAPs), on the global market for datacentre switches and on the EEA market for enterprise campus Ethernet switches.
It concluded that the acquisition, which was first announced in January this year, “would not significantly reduce competition on such markets. In particular, concerning the horizontal overlaps between the companies’ activities in the market for WLAN equipment, WAPs and Ethernet campus switches.” The EC added that in the EEA, the combined company’s market position would “remain moderate”, that it would continue to face competition from a wide range of competitors, including strong and established players” in each of the technology product markets, that the two vendors are not each others’ closest rivals and that customers would be able to react accordingly to any WLAN and campus Ethernet switch price increases.
