United States Clears Lenovo Acquisition of IBM’s x86 Server Division

The US authorities have approved the acquisition of IBM’s x86 server division by the Chinese Lenovo. The current tensions between the United States and China were apparently not significant enough to invalidate the deal.

The so-called Committee on Foreign Investment investigated the consequences of the takeover for homeland security. That writes The Wall Street Journal. This is a standard procedure; the committee scrutinizes all deals that may have implications for U.S. security.

The decision is somewhat remarkable, because the United States and China have accused each other of espionage in recent months. In July, the Chinese government raided Microsoft offices, presumably because of Microsoft’s possible collaboration with American espionage services. On the other hand, the same month, the US government charged a Chinese person for allegedly stealing data from military aircraft.

Lenovo has announced that the acquisition of the server branch for x86 systems should be completed before the end of this year. It concerns the branch that, among other things, made the System x systems, BladeCenters and Flex System blade, for which Lenovo has put 1.7 billion euros on the table. Production of System z mainframes will remain with IBM.

About 7,500 IBM employees will move to Lenovo as part of the deal. The two parties will also work closely together in the field of storage. The two are no strangers to each other. In 2005, Lenovo already took over the PC branch of IBM, which gave the Chinese company, among other things, the well-known ThinkPad line.