It came as something of a surprise, but Avago has merged itself with Broadcom, creating a rather large consolidated business – in a $37bn deal, comprising $17bn cash and $20bn stock. The new entity will survive as Broadcom, but we can expect some considerable internal readjustments, as superfluous assets are sold off or rehomed. There are considerable overlapping elements of the two portfolios, particularly in networking chips, and gigabit Ethernet. Avago has started to get a reputation as something of an asset stripper, sending home half the engineers in earlier acquisition at Emulex and there will certainly be considerable casualties here. The key to this deal was always convincing the senior Broadcom team that there was room for them and…