Hock Tan: the tech sector’s supreme dealmaker

Broadcom’s boss Hock Tan has acquired a reputation as the industry’s prime dealmaker – a renown that suffered a blow under Donald Trump. Now he has another big fish on the line.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan
(Image credit: © Alamy)

When Broadcom’s CEO Hock Tan met Donald Trump in early November 2017, the two men struck up an instant accord. The meeting seemed a win-win for both men, says the Financial Times. Tan’s announcement that he was shifting the Singapore-based chipmaker back to its original corporate home was a big endorsement of Trump’s America First campaign. It was also a nod to the American dream.

Tan outlined how he’d arrived in America as a poor “18-year-old skinny kid” on a scholarship to MIT. Now he wanted to “give back”. Yet, within days, the bonhomie was shattered. Tan’s narrative had omitted to mention that “he had a grand plan up his sleeve”. When, four days later, he launched an audacious $130bn hostile bid for US chip firm Qualcomm, Trump’s fury at being taken for a mug was palpable. Trump played the national security card to block the deal.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.