Activision Blizzard shareholders approve Microsoft buyout, but it's not a done deal

pcgamer.com:

Activision Blizzard's shareholders have overwhelmingly approved Microsoft's offer to buy the company for $95 a share. As Bloomberg points out, however, the vote doesn't mean that the acquisition is a done deal, and the Wall Street crowd isn't fully convinced it will happen. 

If big investors believed it were a sure thing, you'd expect them to buy up Activision Blizzard shares at any price below $95, since that's what Microsoft is going to pay for them—it's like buying a dollar for less than a dollar. Even if you're only getting a tiny discount, you may as well take the deal. Activision Blizzard shares are currently going for $77, however. That's a big discount, suggesting low confidence that the $95 per share buyout will actually happen.

The agency that could stop the acquisition is the US Federal Trade Commission, which happens to be particularly concerned about just this kind of merger.

«Evidence suggests that decades of mergers have been a key driver in consolidation across industries, with this latest merger wave threatening to concentrate our markets further,» FTC chair Lina Khan said earlier this year. "...Industry consolidation and weakened competition have denied Americans of an open economy, with workers, farmers, small businesses and consumers paying the price."

In March, a group of organizations which includes the Communications Workers of America—the union working to organize Call of Duty QA workers at Raven Software—petitioned the FTC to scrutinize the deal. The group argued that the deal will have anticompetitive effects, and that the lack of union membership among Microsoft employees is evidence of union suppression.

In March, Microsoft said that it «respects Activision Blizzard employees' right to choose