EMC Corp.

For a local company, the decision to be acquired by a larger firm from out of state can be a tough but smart call.

The $67 billion acquisition of EMC by Texas-based Dell has been cleared by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, paving the way for the largest IT merger in U.S. history.

Reports are coming in that the proposed $67-billion acquisition of Hopkinton-based EMC by Dell is set to receive approval from the European Union.

Officials at EMC Corporation of Hopkinton said its merger with Dell is on track, as the company released its fourth quarter financial results and announced substantial layoffs at its subsidiary VMware.

The cloud storage company VMware has announced 800 employees will be laid off and a new chief financial officer will come in as its parent company, EMC Corporation of Hopkinton, prepares for an impending merger with Dell.

Hopkinton data storage firm EMC Corp. has appointed Chad Sakac as the president of its renamed VCE division, in the hopes he can create synergies with the rest of the corporation.

The acquisition of Hopkinton-based EMC Corp. by Dell Inc. has made it through the “go shop” period with no outside acquisition proposals coming in to unseat the approximately $67-billion purchase, according to EMC.

Inside Route 128, incubators for early-stage companies are numerous, but in MetroWest and Greater Worcester, the options are far more limited. But two local nonprofit leaders, Kevin O'Sullivan, president and CEO of Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives in Worcester, and Barbara Finer, CEO of TechSandBox in Hopkinton, have been pioneers on the incubation frontier and are leading ongoing efforts to increase resources to help local startups thrive.

Five companies located in the MetroWest region earned the highest scores possible on the Human Rights Campaign's annual Corporate Equality Index (CEI), that measures major companies' lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) inclusion in the workplace.

Nina Hargus has been appointed chief marketing officer of EMC Information Infrastructure for the Hopkinton-based EMC Corp., the company announced Monday.