Activision Blizzard acquisition won’t happen bets Wall Street – despite investor approval

metro.co.uk:

98% of Activision Blizzard shareholders have voted in favour of Microsoft’s buyout but many outside investors think the deal won’t happen.

For a brief moment it looked as if Activision Blizzard’s shareholders might actually vote against the planned Microsoft acquisition, not only because one investment group advised against it but because the current share price indicates that Wall Street does not expect the deal to go through.

The acquisition has two hurdles to clear before it goes through and it’s navigated the first one – getting the approval of shareholders – with ease.

However, it wasn’t shareholders that Wall Street was worried about, and it seems that many expect the American monopolies commission to come out against the record-breaking buyout.

Although only 2% of investors voted against the deal, they did have a legitimate point: that the current share price is much lower than it should be and so they could’ve got much more money if this had happened a year or so ago.

The recent decline of Call Of Duty and the drop in share price caused by the controversies over workplace abuse means Microsoft were able to snap Activision Blizzard for much less than they should’ve been.

At the moment though the current share price is even lower than that, at 24% less a share than what Microsoft is prepared to pay. This is apparently because speculators expect the acquisition to be blocked by the U.S. government.

To the layperson, that seems unlikely given how rarely it seems to interfere with other similar deals (Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter is predicted to be twice as likely to happen), but other buyouts have been blocked recently, such as Nvidia’s acquisition of Arm.

President Joe Biden’s administration has been much more proactive