Qualcomm Caught Jumping The Gun On Flarion Merger

from the a-little-bit-too-anxious dept

Apparently, Qualcomm was in quite a rush to close their deal to buy Flarion last year -- perhaps too much of a rush. Did they think that Flarion was going to go somewhere without them? It's going to cost Qualcomm an extra $1.8 million in fines after the Justice Department penalized Qualcomm for taking operational control of the wireless tech vendor before it had a chance to approve (or not) the merger. Unfortunately, the Reuters report is lacking some of the details concerning what actually happened here. It seems like a fairly basic thing to wait for the official okay on such mergers -- and it's a bit surprising that Qualcomm would have jumped the gun. The article also doesn't note just how the DoJ discovered that Qualcomm had taken over before approval for the deal came down. Still, for a merger that cost $600 million and likely represents an important piece of Qualcomm's technology going forward, a $1.8 million fine is not much to worry about.