Hewlett Packard Enterprise gets EU approval for $14 bn Juniper deal

The EU Commission on Thursday announced its decision to grant blanket approval for Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks, a company engaged in the manufacture and marketing of networking products, including routers, switches, network management software, network security products, and networking technology.

The commission noted that the deal will not have any significant effect on the market for wireless local area network equipment and access points, ethernet campus switches and datacentre switches.

According to the commission, the merged company will still continue to face market competition although the takeover will help Hewlett Packard Enterprise upgrade and develop new products.

Britain's antitrust enforcer is also assessing the HPE-Juniper deal and a decision is expected on 14 August.

Spring, Texas-based HPE had in January announced plans to acquire Sunnyvale, California-based Juniper for $40 per share in cash.

Juniper shareholders had, in April, approved the $14 billion HPE-Juniper Networks deal in a majority vote of over 265 million against 258,000 who voted against the merger.

Both companies expect to close the deal before the end of 2024.

An HPE-Juniper combination will offer customers a range of new age AI-backed network solutions.

Juniper is known for its massive service offering and enterprise campus networking solutions as also the Juniper Mist AI solutions.

As of now HPE has a 7 per cent share in the Ethernet switch marker while Juniper has a 3 per cent market share against market leader Cisco System’s 47 per cent market share.

Cisco has a 36 per cent share in the combined service provider and enterprise router market compared with 10 per cent for Juniper, according to IDC data.