Rumor: EU Will Announce Decision On Microsoft – Activision Deal Today

gameranx.com:

The European Commission is expected to release a decision on the Microsoft – Activision deal today.

Bloomberg, alongside Reuters, have reported that not only is the EU releasing their decision a week early, they are expected to approve the deal. Of course, the same prediction was made of the UK and the FTC before, so is there a reason to believe things will turn out differently today?

In fact, there is a good reason to do so. The head of the European Commission on competition matters, Margrethe Vestager, stated that the EU can come to different conclusions than other regulators when it comes to deals like that between Microsoft and Activision. It’s a statement that hints at the tensions between the UK and EU following Brexit, but it may also simply reflect the differences in the regulators in general.

The EU had previously delayed their decision on the Microsoft-Activision deal to May 22, 2023. At the time, Vestager stated that regulators should not be in a race to get to their decisions on such deals. This also sounded like a criticism intended for both the CMA and the FTC. The FTC in particular, went ahead with a lawsuit blocking the deal, that was criticized by many observers and has a strong chance of failing in front of the FTC courts. You can read the opinion of one such observer here.

Is the FTC really a factor in the EU’s decision? Possibly. We had reported last January on the allegation that the FTC blocked the EU from approving the Microsoft – Activision deal early, by suing Microsoft preemptively. At the time, the thread of logic is that if the EU had done their approval early, it would look bad for other regulators to then block the deal, as they would have to argue why they came to a different conclusion.

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