The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of McAfee, a vendor of information technology security, by Intel. The approval is conditional upon a set of commitments ensuring fair competition between the parties and their competitors in the field of computer security, a growing concern due to the exponential rise in the number of malware such as viruses.

The European Commission was concerned that, as a result of the proposed transaction between Intel and McAfee as initially notified, other companies' security solutions might have suffered from a lack of interoperability with Intel CPUs and chipsets or from a technical tying between the latter and McAfee’s security solutions. The Commission was also concerned about possible effects on Intel’s competitors if McAfee solutions were no longer compatible with non-Intel CPUs and chipsets.

In order to address the Commission's concerns, Intel committed, among other things, to ensure that vendors of rival security solutions will have access to all necessary information to use functionalities of Intel's CPUs and chipsets in the same way as those functionalities used by McAfee. Intel also committed not to actively impede competitors' security solutions from running on Intel CPUs or chipsets. Finally, Intel will avoid hampering the operation of McAfee's security solutions when running on personal computers containing CPUs or chipsets sold by Intel's competitors.

• Intel Corporation (Public, NASDAQ:INTC) is the leading manufacturer of central processing units ("CPUs"), the core chip of a computer, and chipsets, which are used in industries such as computing and communications, and are among the most important components of computers. Intel also develops platforms of digital computing technologies, which combine various types of hardware and software.
• McAfee, Inc (Public, NYSE:MFE) is a security technology company active in the design and development of security products and services focused on ensuring that internet connected devices are protected from malicious content.

Intel and McAfee are active in neighbouring and rather complementary products markets. The merger's effects, therefore, should not be measured in terms of overlaps of products and services, but rather in terms of conglomerate effects. In addition, security solutions vendors need, inter alia, access to specific information regarding CPUs to be able to develop new solutions.

In its decision, the Commission concluded that the commitments were suitable to remove the competition concerns identified while preserving the efficiencies of the merger, because they are designed to maintain interoperability between the merged entity's products and those of their competitors, thereby ensuring competition on an equal footing between the parties and their competitors. The remedies will be monitored by a trustee.