IBM Receives Antitrust Clearance in $34 Billion Red Hat Acquisition

Cleary Gottlieb successfully represented International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) in the merger proceedings before the EU Commission leading to the unconditional authorization of its acquisition of Red Hat.

The acquisition brings together the best-in-class hybrid cloud providers and will enable companies to securely move all business applications to the cloud. The transaction combines IBM’s IT software, hardware, and services businesses with Red Hat’s open-source software portfolio, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux server operating system. Together, IBM and Red Hat will help clients create cloud-native business applications faster and drive greater portability and security of data and applications on premise and across multiple public and private clouds.

The acquisition was announced in December 2018, and it is by far the IBM’s largest deal ever and the third-biggest in the history of U.S. tech.

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open-source cloud software.