Europe unconditionally approves HPE’s acquisition of Juniper Networks

Announced at the start of this year, the mega M&A is designed to significantly boost HPE’s relatively high-margin networking business, as well as delivering the now customary suite of ill-defined AI benefits. Any deal of this size will always require regulatory sign-off but since HPE is not currently a major player in the networking world, it’s hard to see how this acquisition would harm competition.

And that’s the conclusion the EC came to after a surprisingly swift review process. Apparently it was only notified of the transaction on 27 June and sets itself a target of five weeks to complete a phase 1 review. In that time it focused on the impact of the move on the following markets:

It found that the merged entity’s share of those markets would be moderate, meaning there would still be plenty of competition in them. That, in turn, allays concerns about the merged entity indulging in sneaky tactics such as anticompetitive bundling of various products and services, especially in the datacenter space.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority launched its own phase 1 investigation on 19 June, so it has the considerable shame of being slower than the EC. Perhaps it was waiting to see what Europe decided and it would be surprising if the CMA identified any problems that eluded the EC. Similarly, we would expect any other ongoing regulatory scrutiny to soon be concluded in HPE’s favour.