Press Release: Mergers: Commission approves joint-venture between ARM, Giesecke & Devrient and Gemalto, subject to conditions

The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed creation of a joint-venture between ARM, a UK semiconductor intellectual property ("IP") supplier, Giesecke & Devrient ("G&D") of Germany and Gemalto of the Netherlands, both providers of security solutions. The joint venture will develop and market trusted execution environments ("TEE") for consumer electronic devices. TEEs offer enhanced security services for applications such as mobile payments running on smartphones and tablets.

The approval is subject to conditions. ARM will provide the necessary hardware information to competitors at the same conditions as to the joint venture to enable them to develop alternative TEE solutions. Moreover, ARM will not design its IP in a way that would degrade the performance of alternative TEE solutions. The Commission had concerns that the transaction as initially notified could have enabled ARM to shut out competitors of the joint venture from the market for TEE. The commitments offered by the companies address these concerns.