Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is one step closer to completing its $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks, with the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) confirming there will be no further review of the deal.
The CMA has not yet released its full findings, but it has updated its Transactions page to note that it has “approved the acquisition of Juniper Networks by Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company.”
The news comes about two months after the CMA launched an initial inquiry into the planned merger and invited comments from relevant stakeholders. The authority set a deadline of July 3, after which it had until August 14 to decide whether to proceed with a more in-depth investigation.
The UK has done well in recent years in blocking the Megabucks takeover, most notably blocking Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision last year, forcing the companies to make a number of concessions to get the deal done. But the EU last week approved the HPE-Juniper deal, on the grounds that the sector is strong enough, a good indication of what the UK will do.
Barring last-minute intervention by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the merger now appears to have cleared major regulatory hurdles and is on track to meet HPE’s anticipated completion date, which HPE said is “early 2025” at the latest.
