![]() ![]() ![]() Western regulators also bristle at criticism - most recently made by Microsoft - that competition authorities like the FTC, the European Commission and the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority are not working in tandem when ruling on which megadeals should be approved.įor most multibillion dollar acquisitions, companies typically need the OK from these agencies to ensure they won’t abuse their expanded positions in the market - approval that also extends to Chinese regulators when such deals include customers or business interests within the world’s second largest economy.Īfter the FTC and CMA ruled against Microsoft’s takeover of Activision, attention has now turned to Brussels where the EU’s officials have until May 22 to either block or approve the deal. ![]() last year, but lawmakers failed to pass any of them. London’s separate legislation, which also severely confines such wholesale dealmaking for such companies, is expected to be approved by the end of the year. have warned that existing Big Tech players - many of which already own vast swathes of the online economy - are gobbling up new parts of the digital landscape, often via acquisitions of nascent competitors that have yet to break into the mainstream.īrussels’ revamp, known as the Digital Markets Act, came into force this month, and significantly restricts how certain so-called gatekeeping digital giants, or tech firms with an outsized footprint, can expand their businesses. In repeated reviews of current antitrust practices, the European Union and U.K. Microsoft’s lawyers had been optimistic - even in the hours building up to the ruling on April 26 - that the British regulator would greenlight the deal, according to two people with knowledge of the company’s thinking. Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, lambasted London for its overreach last month and lamented that the U.K. That is particularly true when it comes to tech deals where lawmakers, mostly in Europe, are rewriting their rulebooks to tackle the perceived over-concentration of market dominance online within the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. However, in the view of many officials, the U.K.’s decision and a similar lawsuit filed by the FTC in December to challenge Microsoft’s largest-ever deal simply reflects a new shared understanding of how to address corporate concentration not just across the economy, but also in the fast-moving digital sector where new industries can flourish, almost overnight. London’s blocking of Microsoft’s $69 billion deal for the video-gaming giant Activision, according to company executives and those within the wider business community, marks a dark day when uncertainty from antitrust regulators, in how they approached such megadeals, undermined companies’ ability to do what they do best: make money. “igital markets may be characterized by certain features that actually caution earlier action or greater action, particularly early to prevent markets from tipping and forming companies from locking in their market power in ways that can make competition much more difficult,” Khan said at an event in October. Repeatedly, FTC Chair Lina Khan has urged antitrust enforcers to intervene early in emerging technologies. For competition officials across the United States and Europe, many of whom were burned by failing to sufficiently scrutinize previous game-changing tech deals like Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram more than a decade ago, the corporate world simply fails to accept a new reality that tougher enforcement is here, and it’s here to stay. ![]()
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