The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of EDS by Hewlett-Packard, both US-based companies active in the IT services sector. The Commission concluded that the concentration would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it.

Hewlett-Packard is an information technology company supplying hardware, services and software to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. EDS is an information technology services company supplying business solutions worldwide.

The Commission examined the effects of the proposed transaction on the supply of IT services and in particular on the provision of IT management services, with a possible sub-division between IT outsourcing services and application outsourcing services, both globally and in the EEA.

The Commission concluded that the concentration is unlikely to raise competition concerns. The Commission found that, in view of their different business focuses, HP and EDS are not each others' most important competitors in any of the potentially relevant markets. Furthermore, in the IT services sector there are a large number of global and regional competitors capable of exercising competitive constraints on the merged company. Given that HP is also active in hardware and software, the Commission investigated the effects of the proposed concentration on sales of hardware (such as servers and storage solutions) and software, both components in the provision of IT services, and found no competition concerns.