The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched a formal “Phase 1” investigation into Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)'s planned acquisition of Juniper Networks.
In January, HPE announced plans to acquire Juniper Networks, designed to combine their respective strengths in networking and IT infrastructure areas encompassing servers, storage, consulting, routing, switching and security. As with almost all large deals today, the primary motivation for the merger was to “accelerate AI-centric innovation,” in corporate parlance, given the critical role cloud infrastructure plays in the burgeoning AI movement.
At the time, HPE said it would pay $40 per share, a 32% premium to the most recent closing price, for a total value of $14 billion. Transactions of this scale are always likely to be subject to scrutiny by regulators and the CMA therefore said it was at the early stages of assessing whether the deal was “likely to materially lessen competition in any market or within a market”. United Kingdom for goods or services.”
The CMA is currently seeking input from relevant stakeholders, with a closing date of 3 July. The CMA has until August 14 to decide whether to proceed with the investigation into a formal “stage two” inquiry.
