Microsoft Activision acquisition may get delayed for a decade

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In a shocking turn of events after UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked the Microsoft Activision deal, the official report from CMA also revealed that if Microsoft is not able to overturn CMA’s decision during their appeal, the deal will be blocked for 10 years.

The deal was originally blocked by the CMA on claims that it will negatively affect the cloud gaming market in the future, as currently there is almost no competition in the cloud gaming space for Microsoft.

Additionally, there’s another problem for Microsoft, as in case if the merger is not possible, Microsoft will have to pay the Breakup Fee of $3 billion to Activision, the Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby Kotick, revealed during an interview with CNBC.

While the amount might not seem that big for a company like Microsoft, Sony, one of their biggest rival, acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion. Sony’s acquisition of Bungie was approved much faster without any difficulties by the regulators as it was much smaller to the current Microsoft Activision deal.

‘Regulators will realize the loss of high-paying jobs from tech companies’ – Kotick

Kotick further commented on how CMA is not looking at the overall benefit to the Industry and said that more mergers should be allowed to compete with companies like Tencent. Kotick said, “I think at some point, you’re gonna start to see the regulators realize that we’re seeing an enormous amount of high-paying jobs getting lost from tech companies.”

“Look at ByteDance, Tencent. These are the best companies in their industries in the world. For American companies to be able to effectively compete, we have to be able to have consolidation and have these kinds of mergers,” he further said.

Kotick will also be stepping down from the position of CEO of Activision Blizzard if the deal is approved, but as of now, the situation seems to be under a lot of contingencies. While Microsoft has not faced any other rejections in this regard, they will have to do their best to convince CMA during their appeal.

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