HPE’s chief executive Antonio Neri said he expects no major hurdles from China’s regulators for his company’s $14bn (R260bn) acquisition of Juniper Networks, a maker of networking equipment and chips for data centres and artificial intelligence.
The deal, announced on Tuesday, would strengthen HPE’s position in the AI computing market and enable it to offer its products and services to customers who prefer to keep their data in-house rather than use cloud providers.
Neri told Reuters that he does not anticipate any significant issues from China, where antitrust authorities blocked Intel’s attempt to buy Israeli chipmaker Tower Semiconductor last year.
He said that HPE had little presence in China after selling its stake in H3C, a joint venture with a Chinese partner, which he said would generate $3bn (R55bn) in cash for HPE.
He also said that Juniper had a very small footprint in China, which would make the deal easier to clear.
“We don’t see a challenge, because their footprint in China is extremely small,” Neri said in an interview.
“We believe we can close this transaction nine to 12 months.