Baker Hughes wins EU approval for $13.6 billion Chart deal

Brussels approved Baker Hughes’ $13.6 billion bid for Chart Industries on July 9, but only after the U.S. companies agreed to sell off parts of Chart’s business and keep their LNG equipment compatible with rivals. The European Commission required those conditions before clearing a transaction that would fold one of the industry’s most important gas-handling suppliers into Baker Hughes’ broader industrial technology platform.

Without safeguards, the combined company could have favored Chart’s LNG business and given Baker Hughes more influence over how customers source equipment for liquefied natural gas projects. To address that risk, Baker Hughes and Chart must divest Chart’s proprietary process technology and its small-scale process technology business, and they must ensure their equipment remains interoperable with third-party LNG equipment. Those commitments will last 10 years, giving rivals and customers a long window of protection in a market built around long-lived infrastructure and switching costs.

Baker Hughes announced the deal on July 29, 2025, offering $210 a share in cash and valuing Chart at $13.6 billion. The companies had been working toward a July 10, 2026, deadline set by the Commission, and Baker Hughes submitted remedies in June to avoid a deeper antitrust investigation.

For Baker Hughes, the acquisition would enlarge a portfolio that already stretches beyond traditional oilfield services into LNG, data centers and decarbonization. Chart brought in $4.2 billion of revenue and $1.0 billion of adjusted EBITDA in 2024, and it operates 65 manufacturing locations and more than 50 service centers around the world. Chart is a global leader in process technologies and equipment for handling gas and liquid molecules, a footprint that gives Baker Hughes more reach in the equipment supply chain that underpins LNG terminals, industrial gas systems and parts of the data center cooling buildout.

Baker Hughes projects the deal would deliver $325 million in annualized cost synergies by the end of the third year.