European Union officials will reportedly be the next to shun the NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) merger with Cambridge headquartered Arm.
EU competition officials join the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) which recently described the potential impact of the chip-maker consolidation as suffocating and harmful, for innovators and competitors.
In Brussels, the belief is that the proposed concessions by Nvidia don’t go far enough to mitigate the potential damage to the market in Europe though, according to reports, it is not yet clear whether the EU will move to block the deal.
Nvidia is said to be preparing to seek the EU regulatory greenlight for the takeover this week, with a filing potentially coming today, according to the Financial Times.
In the UK - where ARM is headquartered and was listed prior to 2020’s US$40bn takeover by Softbank - there is said to be growing opposition to the deal, which comes as the government has notably begun posturing and pushing back against foreign M&A.
Silicon Valley-based Nvidia meanwhile does not anticipate an easy or quick completion, with the group recently acknowledging that the timeline may run beyond the 18 months it originally pencilled in for the transaction.
The chip-maker has so far conceded to allow Arm’s licencees to retain access to the technologies and it will retain the products available to those customers, the FT noted, however, the report also quoted an unnamed source said to be familiar with the process who claimed the deal could “go down to the wire”.