Often the scourge of tech execs in the US, Britain's competition regulator has a new potential target in its sights: HPE's proposed $14 billion purchase of Juniper Networks.

The $40 per share cash transaction was made public in January, and while many of Juniper's shareholders in April waved it through, some launched a lawsuit claiming Juniper withheld material information from investors.

Today the Competition and Markets Authority - which forced Meta to kill off the deal for Giphy, made life tough for Microsoft when it wanted to take over Activision Blizzard, and contributed to the demise of Nvidia's purchase of Arm - launched a merger inquiry into HPE's pending acquisition of Juniper.

The watchdog is inviting comments on the transaction from "any interested party" to ascertain the impact.

"The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is considering whether it is or may be the case that this transaction, if carried into effect, will result in the creation of a relevant merger situation under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002 and, if so, whether the creation of that situation may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services," it said.

HPE previously said it expects the addition of Juniper to double its existing networking business and contribute to more than half of annual operating income. The CMA will likely want intelligent commentary from rivals or customers worried about the consequences.

This isn't the first time HPE has gone shopping in the networks sector, having spent $3 billion on Aruba in 2015, and $2.7 billion on switch biz 3Com in 2009. As we've pointed out previously, this will be the biggest deal for HPE since its disastrous purchase of Autonomy. There's seemingly little overlap between the network kit from HPE and Juniper, save for Aruba and Mist product lines.

The Register has asked HPE - currently running its Discover conference in Las Vegas - and Juniper Networks to comment.

An HPE spokesperson said: "We can confirm the UK Competition and Markets Authority has accepted our filing as part of the standard process to review the proposed acquisition of Juniper Networks in several jurisdictions. We are working to complete all necessary reviews and secure clearance quickly and efficiently so that we can begin delivering value to our customers as soon as possible. We continue to expect to close by the end of calendar year 2024 or early 2025."

Readers may not be surprised that HPE CEO Antonio Neri said of the Juniper purchase when it was announced at the start of this year that AI would play a part.

He said the deal would "strengthen HPE's position at the nexus of accelerating macro-AI trends, expand our total addressable market, and drive further innovation for customers as we help bridge the AI-native and cloud-native worlds, while also generating significant value for shareholders."

The CMA has until August 14 to decide whether to refer the inquiry for a phase two investigation. HPE wanted to get the deal over the line before this calendar year is out or early next year. That soft date is now less than certain. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/06/19/cma_hpe_juniper_networks/