US regulators have approved Dell's $67 billion purchase of EMC
Europe is also reportedly ready to approve the deal soon.
EMC shareholders haven't voted on it yet, but one of the activist hedge fund shareholders - who had wanted Dell and EMC to make some changes - is ready to back the deal, so there's very little resistance left on that count, Re/code's Arik Hesseldahl reports.
Dell announced its intent to buy EMC for $67 billion in October in a deal that involved a lot of debt and complicated financing, including turning the VMware shares that EMC owns into a tracking stock. EMC owns about 81% of VMware.
Earlier this month, EMC board member Bill Green told investors at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference that the deal had been so carefully orchestrated that only an "act of God" would keep it from happening.
But if this deal does go through as planned, it will catapult Dell into the big leagues in the $2 trillion enterprise technology marketing, putting it on par with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM in terms of the number of products that it sells and the global customers it can serve.
Still, there have been a lot of questions and concerns. For instance, Dell is taking on a lot of debt to make this deal happen, borrowing about $50 billion, it confirmed in December in a SEC filing. And Dell is still carrying about $11 billion in debt on its books from its $24.4 billion go-private deal.
So Dell has been spinning out assets, like the planned IPO of a unit called SecureWorks. And it's reportedly been shopping around other units like its SonicWall security business and Quest Software for a reported $2 billion each, and its outsourcing business, Perot Systems, for a reported $5 billion.
There's also been concern that once the deal closes, Dell will raid VMware's coffiers to help pay off debt, something that EMC CEO Joe Tucci is promising won't happen.
And of course, employees are nervous about potential layoffs with redudent positions. EMC has already been cutting jobs in 2016, as it promised it would before the merger was announced. Meanwhile, VMware has also been laying off workers ahead of this merger.
VMware shareholders (besides EMC) haven't been thrilled. The stock is down about 30% since the merger was announced, and is down another 2% on this news, trading at just under $49.