This January, China’s Lenovo Group Inc. agreed to two big U.S. deals: the $2.91 billion acquisition of the Motorola handset business from Google, and a $2.3 billion purchase of IBM 's low-end server business.
Both deals showed the company, best known for its laptop business, planning to expand into other markets in a big way. And both needed approval from a U.S. government panel tasked with assessing the national security implications of foreign takeovers.
While rejections are rare, the increasing tensions between the U.S. and China over cyber security made the process worth keeping an eye on.
And today, one of the two deals got a green light from the government:
International Business Machines Corp. said the agreement to sell its low-end server business for $2.3 billion to Chinese computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. has passed the U.S. government panel that screens deals with possible national-security implications.
IBM said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. has concluded its review of the company’s sale of x86-based server business.
“The parties now look forward to closing the transaction,” IBM said in a news release Friday.
So next up, the Motorola mobile deal. Any progress on that front? On Thursday, Lenovo Chief Executive Yang Yuanqing told the WSJ’s Juro Osawa that “we are making a lot of progress and we are still on track,” to get both the IBM and Motorola deals done by the end of the year.
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