Thales, Gemalto Now Have 11 of 14 Clearances for Merger

Thales and Gemalto have cleared another two hurdles in their race to get approval for their proposed merger: The companies have announced that they have received clearances from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and Mexico’s Comisión Federal de Competencia Económica.

The news comes only a week after the companies’ announcement that they had attained clearance from the New Zealand Commerce Commission, which itself came on the heels of a clearance from the European Commission. The latter was perhaps particularly important, with the European Union regulator having announced this past summer that it would open an antitrust investigation into the proposed merger, as Gemalto and Thales are two of Europe’s – and indeed the world’s – biggest providers of Hardware Security Modules. Its approval of the deal followed a commitment from Thales to sell off its HSM business to an appropriate third party.

With these latest clearances, Thales and Gemalto are within reach of their goal. The companies now have 11 of the 14 regulatory clearances needed for the deal, with two outstanding clearances needed from antitrust authorities in the US and Russia, and another approval needed from a foreign investments regulator in Russia.

Thales and Gemalto say that they expect to obtain these remaining clearances in the first quarter of 2019, with Thales’ acquisition of Gemalto to follow soon after that.