Bloomberg News/Landov Just four months ago, President Donald Trump hosted Broadcom Chief Executive Hock TanBroadcom Ltd. and Qualcomm Corp. appeared to be in a pretty standard hostile-takeover fight for months: Broadcom made offers, the Qualcomm board denied them, so Broadcom tried to convince Qualcomm shareholders to reshape Qualcomm’s board to be more friendly toward a merger. That script was upended last week, with a surprising intervention by the U.S. government that ratcheted quickly and culminated with President Donald Trump saying he was blocking the record-breaking deal late Monday. Trump’s move came after an action-packed week that included Broadcom rushing plans to move to the U.S., Qualcomm’s executive chairman stepping down from being actively involved in the company and chip giant Intel Corp. possibly getting involved in the fray. Some background on the companies is helpful before diving into the details. Qualcomm QCOM, -4.66% , based in San Diego, invented the first digital cellular CDMA technology, which became an industry standard in the early days of cellphones. The company also has developed communications chips and it licenses a vast portfolio of wireless technology patents to other companies.via