IBM gains unconditional EU approval for $34 billion Red Hat deal

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. tech giant International Business Machines Corp <IBM.N> on Thursday won unconditional EU antitrust approval for its $34 billion (27 billion pounds) acquisition of software company Red Hat <RHT.N>.

IBM is looking to the deal, its biggest to date, to expand its subscription-based software offerings to counter falling software sales and declining demand for mainframe servers.

The European Commission said in a statement that it had concluded the transaction would raise no competition concerns. Reuters reported on June 19 that the deal would get the go-ahead.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Alissa de Carbonnel)