Trump administration’s block in Qualcomm vs. Broadcom merger should shake tech to its core

Trump administration’s block in Qualcomm vs. Broadcom merger should shake tech to its core

6 years ago
Anonymous $gIi3-PxxKB

https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/12/trump-and-cfius/

This weekend, I published a comprehensive overview of the epic hundred-billion-dollar Qualcomm versus Broadcom merger battle that has taken place over the past few weeks. In that post, I concluded that “… the Trump administration is going to attempt to maintain jurisdiction over the merger regardless of Broadcom’s redomicile process [back to the US], and will likely end up negative on the deal although it may not outright block it.”

Not only did the Trump administration move faster than expected to make a decision on the merger through CFIUS — the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (TechCrunch’s overview of the committee here) — but it decided to unilaterally block the transaction from taking place. While not unprecedented in the history of CFIUS, this is an incredible decision on a U.S. tech merger, and has massive ramifications for tech company valuations and strategy going forward.