Avago nears deal for Broadcom - sources

By Greg Roumeliotis (Reuters) - Avago Technologies Ltd is close to an agreement to acquire fellow chipmaker Broadcom Corp , two people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. A deal between Avago and Broadcom could come as early as this week, the people said, cautioning that the negotiations had not yet been finalised. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Shares of Broadcom, which had a market value of about $29 billion as of Tuesday, soared almost 20 percent to $56.40 while Avago's rose 9 percent to $143.29 on Wednesday afternoon after the Wall Street Journal first reported on the news. Avago has been looking to buy another chipmaker, Reuters reported this month, and had approached companies including Xilinx Inc , Japan's Renesas Electronics Corp <6723.T> and Maxim Integrated Products Inc . Avago, which develops semiconductor devices for the wireless and industrial markets, has been looking at expanding in areas ranging from analogue semiconductors to radio frequency technology. The company bid for Freescale Semiconductor Ltd earlier this year, before NXP Semiconductors NV bought it for $11.8 billion. Broadcom has benefited from higher sales of its Wi-Fi and broadband chips to smartphone makers such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd <005930.KS>. Worldwide semiconductor M&A reached $31 billion last year, the most since 2011, according to Thomson Reuters data. (Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional by Sai Sachin R and Anya George Tharakan in Bengalore; Editing by Christian Plumb)