Chinese Antitrust Regulators Approve Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Acquisition

[T0@st]

There were rumblings late last week about China's competition regulatory bodies giving Microsoft the go ahead for its proposed takeover of the Activision, Blizzard & King games publishing group. The crowd-sourced content site Seeking Alpha was the first online outlet to break the news last Friday - the author had learned from capital market firm - Dealreporter - that China's State Administration for Market Regulation had granted unconditional approval for the $68.7 billion bid, following the conclusion of a "Phase 3" investigation. The latest judgement arrived only a few days after the EU Commission's approval of the deal.

Microsoft has chosen to make an official announcement about this verdict - and has today released statements to several gaming news outlets, including GamesIndustry.biz and Eurogamer: "China's unconditional clearance of our acquisition of Activision Blizzard follows clearance decisions from jurisdictions such as the European Union and Japan, bringing the total to 37 countries representing more than two billion people. The acquisition combined with our recent commitments to the European Commission will empower consumers worldwide to play more games on more devices." Microsoft's next challenge sits with the US government's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) - a final deliberation is due this August.



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[Bones]

"Microsoft's next challenge sits with the US government's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) - a final deliberation is due this August."

Translation:
We've received and reviewed your counter-offer to our originally proposed offer.
We will be prepared to present our own counter-offer in August of this year.

 

[Wirko]

It's funny how the competition regulators of the world seem to be connected in series rather than in parallel. Each one will start the lengthy bureaucratic process only when the previous one has finished work. It was a similar case when Nvidia wanted Arm for lunch.

 

[Flanker]

It's funny how the competition regulators of the world seem to be connected in series rather than in parallel. Each one will start the lengthy bureaucratic process only when the previous one has finished work. It was a similar case when Nvidia wanted Arm for lunch.

Still sticking with the linear story lines instead of moving on to open world

 

[Wirko]

Still sticking with the linear story lines instead of moving on to open world

Microsoft Regulator Simulator. Only internal builds exist.

 

[trsttte]

It's funny how the competition regulators of the world seem to be connected in series rather than in parallel. Each one will start the lengthy bureaucratic process only when the previous one has finished work. It was a similar case when Nvidia wanted Arm for lunch.

Given how the pieces are falling into place in short order that's not accurate, they've been working in parallel but releasing the decisions in series.

It kind of makes sense, better let someone else be the bad guys first, though in this case other than the UK they're all being a bunch of wimps letting Microsoft take over another giant publisher