Some 18 months after announcing its $69 billion takeover of cloud-computing firm VMware, Broadcom has received final regulatory approvals and has closed the deal.

Similar to Microsoft’s recent purchase of game publisher Activision Blizzard for a similar fee, this deal was held up by politics and regulatory scrutiny and had its closing date pushed back three times.

The final country to approve the deal was China, with its regulator on Tuesday giving Broadcom the greenlight ahead of the 26 November deadline.

One of the main reasons for the deal’s delay was the ongoing tensions between the US and China over tougher chip export control measures. However, these tensions were eased somewhat by a recent meeting between US president Joe Biden and Chinese president Xi Jinping.

The deal had already received approval from the European Commission after Broadcom offered remedies to help competing firm Marvell Technology. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority – which was the party that had held up the Microsoft-Activision deal – gave the deal its approval following an in-depth investigation.

Broadcom said that the deal will enable enterprise customers to create and modernise their private and hybrid cloud environments, and that it plans to invest in the VMWare Cloud Foundation software stack.

Hock Tan, president and chief executive officer of Broadcom, said: "We are excited to welcome VMware to Broadcom and bring together our engineering-first, innovation-centric teams as we take another important step forward in building the world's leading infrastructure technology company.

“With a shared focus on customer success, together we are well positioned to enable global enterprises to embrace private and hybrid cloud environments, making them more secure and resilient."

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