The FTC issued second requests to the parties in early July, and the EC announced an in-depth investigation of the transaction in late December 2022. When announcing the investigation, Margrethe Vestager, the EC's head of antitrust enforcement, said the commission had concerns that Broadcom could eliminate its competitors' access to VMware's virtualization software. The EC previously investigated Broadcom for its sales tactics, resulting in a seven-year consent decree.