Earlier this month, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan called VMware Chairman Michael Dell, who is also Dell's CEO, to offer $61 billion to buy VMware.

According to Reuters, Hock Tan, 70, is known in the industry for his ability to capture M&A opportunities and control transaction costs. The deal would boost Broadcom's market value to $225 billion.

Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake are the main investors behind VMware. The former holds 40% of the company's shares, and he must make a decision in the face of a takeover offer. With the current global economic slowdown, rising inflation, and tech stocks plummeting, you have to stick to better deals or risk losing money.

Broadcom eventually bought VMware for $61 billion in cash and stock, a 50% premium to the latter's stock price. To seal the deal, Hock Tan also agreed to give VMware 40 days after the deal was signed to find another higher bidder, according to an insider who did not want to be named, confirmed by VMware.

Broadcom has been following VMware for several months. VMware just spun off from Dell Technologies in November 2021. Broadcom had worried that Dell and Silver Lake were ignoring the takeover because shareholders risked losing their tax-exempt status if their companies entered into merger talks within the first six months of a split.

VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram wrote to his staff about the deal announcement, reassuring Broadcom is not a company that puts profits before innovation. "Hock Tan is committed to fostering a culture of shared innovation," he wrote.

Hock Tan's acquisition strategy is very shrewd and effective. He often targets companies with a "franchise" flavor in the industry, cutting off some unnecessary investment projects that he believes are of little value and have excessive marketing expenses.

A former employee of the company who worked closely with Hock Tan said: "He runs Broadcom as a portfolio, even in seemingly separate areas of business, if he dominates a certain market segment, he It will immediately raise funds to initiate mergers and acquisitions.”

Hock Tan and Broadcom did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

Hock Tan said he was a "skinny 18-year-old" who grew up in Malaysia and his parents couldn't afford to send him to university. In 1971, with an MIT scholarship, Hock Tan entered engineering school. He later earned an MBA from Harvard University.

Before joining chipmaker Integrated Circuit Systems in 1994, he held various executive positions in Malaysia and the United States, rising to CEO in 1999.

It was the recruitment of Silver Lake that made Hock Tan later CEO of Broadcom. In 2006, Hock Tan joined the semiconductor company Avago Technologies. Silver Lake and KKR bought the company for $2.66 billion the year before.

As Hock Tan set out to consolidate the semiconductor industry, a flurry of deals followed, often backed by Silver Lake. In 2014, Avago bought memory chip maker LSI Corp. for $6.6 billion. In 2015, Avago went on to acquire Broadcom for $37 billion and renamed the company Broadcom. In 2016, Broadcom acquired network equipment maker Brocade Communications Systems for $5.9 billion.

In 2017, Broadcom launched a $117 billion hostile takeover of rival chipmaker Qualcomm in what would be the largest tech deal ever. The U.S. government blocked the takeover over concerns that Broadcom, then headquartered in Singapore, would gain too much dominance in the U.S. semiconductor industry at the expense of innovation.

Hock Tan then turned his attention to software companies. Like semiconductors, these companies can generate reliable cash flow. Broadcom Corp. bought business software company CA Technologies Inc for $18.9 billion and Symantec Corp.'s security unit for $10.7 billion.

After each acquisition, Broadcom used cash flow from its business to pay down most of the debt it took on to finance it. Hargreaves Lansdown analyst Matt Britzman said it gave Hock Tan the courage to continue his acquisition spree. "Broadcom unlevered quickly after every major acquisition," Britzman said.