FTC Confirms Kotick’s Claim Lina Khan Met With CMA Before Activision Decision

gameranx.com:

The FTC has confirmed that their chairperson Lina Khan met with the CMA before they laid down their ruling on the Microsoft – Activision deal. This was earlier revealed by Activision Blizzard King CEO Bobby Kotick in an interview with CNBC.

This is the transcript of Kotick’s statements on CNBC show Squawkbox:

“Well, I was surprised to learn that Lina Khan and the head of the CMA had a meeting a week and a half ago in Washington. You know, legally, you’re not supposed to be discussing active litigation. I don’t know that they did. But, you know, I think that that’s what you’re seeing now is that the CMA is being used as a tool by the FTC to be able to create these kinds of outcomes, and it this isn’t the way that they’re supposed to be operating.”

Earlier in the interview, Kotick expressed a loss of trust that the regulators were acting in their countries’ best interests:

“You know, I think what we found through this process is that these regulators are now taking dogmatic positions, that they don’t serve the interest in the missions of what they’re actually established to do.”

Now, some of you reading this may doubt that this is about helping US or UK economies. It may seem that this is wholly self-serving talk on Kotick’s behalf to get his deal to go through. Well, in this interview he once again makes the case for why companies like Microsoft and Activision are looking for these deals:

“I think at some point, you’re gonna start to see the regulator’s realize that we’re seeing enormous amount of high paying jobs getting lost from tech companies. You’re starting to see the foreign competitors, I look at Alibaba’s breakup.

Alibaba now has six separate companies, each of which is very well situated to compete effectively