EU Clears Dell's Purchase of EMC Corp

The European Commission said on Monday it had cleared Dell's planned $67 billion acquisition of data storage company EMC Corp.

Dell unveiled the deal in October last year, the largest ever in the technology industry sector, and designed to enable it to better challenge rivals Cisco Systems, IBM and Hewlett-Packard in cloud computing, mobility and cyber security.

The Commission said that the merged entity would have a moderate market share in external enterprise storage systems and would still face strong competition.

In virtualization software, EMC's VMware had a strong position, the Commission found, but would have neither the ability nor the incentive to shut out competitors.

Reuters reported on Feb. 18 that the deal was set to be cleared.

(Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek)