Michael Dell, one of the world’s richest technology entrepreneurs, is in line for up to $20bn (£12bn) if Broadcom, a semiconductor company, pushes ahead with a $50bn takeover of VMware.
Broadcom is in talks to buy the US cloud computing company, Bloomberg reported, sending shares in VMware up by 15pc in early trading on Monday.
The deal would be one of the biggest in the tech industry’s history. It comes amid a historic rout in software company shares as interest rates rise and inflation soars.
Broadcom, best known for wireless internet and Bluetooth chips that feature in smartphones and routers, has grown to become one of the world’s biggest technology companies through a string of acquisitions. VMware provides “virtual software” allowing users to access a remote version of systems such as Windows over the internet.
Dell, the computer maker founded and run by Mr Dell, acquired a majority stake in VMware in 2016 when it bought storage company EMC, which owned 81pc of the company.
Dell subsequently spun off the company by distributing shares to shareholders, with Mr Dell, who currently owns around 47pc of Dell, receiving a 40pc stake in VMware.
Mr Dell is currently the 26th richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg, with a fortune of $44bn.
The 57-year-old founded his eponymous company in his dorm room at the University of Texas dorm in the 1980s and turned it into one of the biggest PC manufacturers in the world during the Nineties. The company is best known for its colourful and cheap laptops.
He engineered a private equity takeover of Dell in 2013 but returned the company to the public markets in 2018.
Broadcom, led by Malaysian-born Hock Tan, started life in 1961 as a spin-off of Hewlett Packard. It was based in Singapore until 2017, when Mr Tan moved the company to the US in the hope of receiving more favourable treatment by regulators.
The company failed to complete what would have been the biggest tech takeover in history, a $117bn purchase of chipmaker Qualcomm, in 2018 when the deal was blocked by Donald Trump.
Broadcom and VMware did not comment.
