Now Europe is getting jitters over Broadcom's Qualcomm takeover bid Chipmaker Broadcom's proposed $142bn (£103bn) hostile takeover of Qualcomm has given European lawmakers the willies over data protection implications for EU citizens. It follows concerns raised by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is reportedly concerned about Singapore-based Broadcom parking its …
If the EU puts up barriers because nobody else is 'good enough' the people within the EU will find themselves further cut off. And as Junker talks about reciprocating in a trade war with the US of rising tariffs. I am sure this will make some protectionists happy but the EU has just ramped up its data protection requirements to the benefit of many a bureaucrat.
If the EU puts up barriers because nobody else is 'good enough' the people within the EU will find themselves further cut off.
Cut off from what. Share what you are smoking.
To put it bluntly, a megamerger today has to clear at least the following authorities(*) in this order.
USA - committee on foreign investment
Eu - competition
USA - competition
China
Korea
If a merger is blocked by any one of these, that merger is dead.
While from an obnoxiousness viewpoint the congress cfi leads the pack, from a competition perspective, Eu is actually the most important:
1. Eu + EEA size exceeds ANY economy of the planet. Including USA. Eu with EEA is > 20 trillion, USA is 18 trillion, China is 11. Like it or not - it is the biggest single market economy on the planet.
2. Eu does not have the lax attitude of USA to "organic" monopolies and applies competition law based on the definition of "significant market power". It does not matter if you own 10, 30 or 90 % of the market. If your market share is sufficient to distort pricing, especially in other markets - you are a subject to the legislation.
Eu commission says jump, the answer is "how high". Then you do it a few times. Smiling while you are doing too - it is good for public relations.
I always find it funny listening to the 3 blind mice and the one under the command of the potted plants. My thought always is: "Have you opened some statistics lately?"
(*)Japan is usually not involved unless it is a Japanese company. Its internal market has different dynamics so what is gross market distortion there does no affect us and vice versa. Russia is ignored under the pre-text of sanctions and the Brazil/India/etc block is still not organized enough.
@ Voland's right hand
"Cut off from what. Share what you are smoking."
Answered by- "2. Eu does not have the lax attitude of USA to "organic" monopolies".
"Like it or not - it is the biggest single market economy on the planet."
With falling global wealth in a political union currently suffering multiple crises one of which is being years behind economic recovery.
"Eu commission says jump, the answer is "how high". Then you do it a few times. Smiling while you are doing too - it is good for public relations."
And such is the mistake of the EU to believe that. The US didnt. China isnt. The US has told the EU to jump as it is sick of doing all the military spending for NATO. Obama claimed we were at the back of the queue for a trade deal and the EU was negotiating one. Trump canned the EU deal and offered to put us to the front of the queue. The UK was the first European (western too I think) country to join China's world bank. The others then followed. Public relations with the powerful countries of the world seem more important than jumping when the EU tries to dictate it.
"I always find it funny listening to the 3 blind mice and the one under the command of the potted plants. My thought always is: "Have you opened some statistics lately?""
I dont have much confidence in the gov doing this right but statistically we still seem to be doing the right thing by leaving the EU.
But back to the point, if the EU is ramping up regulation and doesnt think the rest of the world measures up then that will be more protectionism aka cutting themselves off.
I thought that Broadcom was moving its headquarters to become an American based company: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/11/02/trump-announces-broadcom-moving-legal-hq-u-s/825600001/
That said, I'm massively confused by the statement "We are concerned about the possibility of a European company handling sensitive data of EU citizens falling in the hands of a company that is based in Singapore, where data protection standards are lower than in the EU." What PII will Qualcomm have on EU citizens other than their own employees?
And the speculation of possible data exfiltration in their chips seems highly unlikely. While the company may be legally domiciled in Singapore, the vast bulk of Broadcom's design efforts and corporate decision making centers are US based so it would be more likely that any exfiltration implementation would come at the behest of the US rather than Singapore. And in purely practical terms, getting exfiltration implemented in a quiet manner in an SoC seems to me like it would be massively difficult given how freely the folks in Silicon Valley talk and the huge number of folks involved in the design, implementation, and testing of an SoC.
Honestly folks, if you're talking about the possibility of exfiltration you really should be talking about software rather than hardware. It's far easier to hide those nefarious programs than it is to design them into the hardware.
But given that Hock Tan's modus operandii is to buy a company and spit out the parts he doesn't want makes Niels Annen's concerns pretty valid about the fate of the Hamburg plant. I'll certainly give him that.
Qualcomm is not an European company, so I don’t get that statement either. Maybe it refers to NXP, which is an European company, but will be part of Qualcomm if China approves the merger. But the statement still does not make much sense, because I don’t know what sensitive data would NXP be handling and why would it be better if an American company (Qualcomm) was handling it as opposed to a Singapore based one.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
