IBM gains unconditional EU approval for $34 billion Red Hat deal

U.S. tech giant International Business Machines Corp on Thursday won unconditional EU antitrust approval for its $34 billion acquisition of software company Red Hat.


IBM is looking to the deal, its biggest to date, to expand its subscription-based software offerings to counter falling software sales and declining demand for mainframe servers.


The European Commission said in a statement that it had concluded the transaction would raise no competition concerns. As reported on June 19 that the deal would get the go-ahead.