IBM-Red Hat Merger Receives EU Approval

IBM (NYSE: IBM) has secured unconditional approval from the European Commission for its proposed acquisition of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) for $34B cash, nearly two months after the U.S. Department of Justice cleared the transaction.

The commission said Thursday the merger, which both companies first announced in October 2018, would not put market competition at risk.

New York-based IBM intends to use complementary Red Hat offerings in efforts to further develop and market open source, hybrid cloud computing platforms. EU regulators found the planned combination would expand options for enterprise customers who seek to place workloads in on-premise infrastsructure or in the cloud.

Big Blue would pay $190 per share for the Raleigh, N.C.-based software vendor as part of the agreement.

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