UK Regulators Investigating AMD-Xilinx Transaction

AMD
(Image credit: AMD)

The UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on Monday began to probe AMD's proposal to acquire Xilinx for $35 billion. The CMA launched an inquiry inviting interested parties to notify it if the potential transaction can negatively impact UK's consumers or businesses. The deadline for the first phase of the investigation is July 6, 2021. 

"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," the statement by the CMA reads.  

Last October AMD and Xilinx announced that they reached a preliminary agreement for AMD to acquire Xilinx for $35 billion in an all-stock transaction. Shareholders of both companies approved the deal this April. 

AMD needs Xilinx, a leading developer of FPGAs, to better compete with Intel, which owns Altera. Both AMD and Xilinx could survive and prosper independently, but the management of these companies believes that the combined company will be stronger than the two separate businesses. 

With the takeover of Xilinx, AMD will be able to offer three types of compute devices used in datacenters: CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs. Furthermore, it will be able to develop hybrid products combining general-purpose processor cores, compute GPU capabilities and field-programmable transistors.

Anton Shilov
Freelance News Writer

Anton Shilov is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • waltc3
    Strange article...Xilinx and AMD are both American companies last I checked. I don't think the UK can do much about the merger, frankly. This is nothing like nVidia/ARM, because ARM is a UK company. Odd article.
    Reply
  • ingtar33
    strangely worded, it's worded as if AMD is under investigation for criminal actions, yet its about a merger between two US companies? don't understand what is going on here.
    Reply
  • Gam3r01
    ingtar33 said:
    strangely worded, it's worded as if AMD is under investigation for criminal actions, yet its about a merger between two US companies? don't understand what is going on here.
    To me it sounds like this agency is just calling upon anyone who might object to the merger. Not an investigation in the slightest.
    Reply
  • ingtar33
    Gam3r01 said:
    To me it sounds like this agency is just calling upon anyone who might object to the merger. Not an investigation in the slightest.
    yes, but why is a UK regulatory body regulating a US company merger to another US company?
    Reply
  • escksu
    Gam3r01 said:
    To me it sounds like this agency is just calling upon anyone who might object to the merger. Not an investigation in the slightest.

    This is an inquiry, so its a formal investigation.
    Reply
  • escksu
    ingtar33 said:
    yes, but why is a UK regulatory body regulating a US company merger to another US company?

    UK can't stop the merger of 2 US companies in USA. However, these 2 companies also have offices in UK and operate in UK. So, UK has the power to limit what these companies could do within UK. Things like sanctions, taxes, ban them from gov contracts etc....
    Reply
  • VforV
    This "investigations" are just for show, so people can feel and think someone actually care about these things (or them), when in fact most of the times, the big guys just get bigger, maybe even with some behind the scenes deals.

    This one in particular is even more funny being from UK about two US companies. I have no worries that nvidia will finish the acquisition of AMR with success, so this one between AMD and Xilinx is really trivial.

    Like I said, this FUD is just for show.
    Reply
  • ginthegit
    escksu said:
    UK can't stop the merger of 2 US companies in USA. However, these 2 companies also have offices in UK and operate in UK. So, UK has the power to limit what these companies could do within UK. Things like sanctions, taxes, ban them from gov contracts etc....

    It does not matter if these are US comanies, its about where the HQ is. You lot dont seem to understand that these International organisations are about Borders, they are about Taxes. The US taxes were too high.

    And, ARM is not UK owned, it was bought out long ago, but its HQ is in the UK so it is UK regulated. All countries have their individual laws too, and if some matter seems anti competitive then it MUST be investigated as a standard rule in the UK.

    We live in a world where few are owning everything, and they have found a way to get around the laws protecting against monopolies, and they are using it.

    You can control Owners, but you cannot stop majority share holders.

    Take a look for yourself, look at majority shareholders for all large companies with a simple google search on each, like apple amd.

    The shareholders are ;

    Blackrock inc
    Vangard inc3 Berkshire Hathaway inc

    4. JP Morgan

    These organisations own near every other company in this world between them as Majority shareholders. This is the largest scam in the world.
    Reply
  • gargoylenest
    maybe they are just hoping to be bribed so they approve the transaction? times are hard for everyone :P
    Reply
  • King_V
    ginthegit said:
    The US taxes were too high.

    https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-corporate-income-tax-rates-and-revenues-compare-other-countries
    Reply