This whole talk of the CMA doesn’t accept behavioral remedies and the deal is good as dead was always flawed to me. I get that people would use prior mergers as precedent. However, what is often overlooked is the why they were blocked and more importantly, how willing the merging parties were willing to fight for the deal.
The majority of the blocked/abandoned deals in the UK, were for singular products and services. There are very few paths forward when the sole reason for the purchase is to own and leverage that single product/service.
In the case of ABK, Microsoft was always willing to sacrifice Call of Duty (and to some extent their cloud game streaming business) to get the deal through. There are very few platform holders that would be willing to spend $70B on publisher, without the ability to fully leverage their largest IP as an exclusive. Microsoft was willing to make that sacrifice.
Yeah, some folks spent months and months building this narrative how CMA was this intransigent entity that would be impossible to overcome because CMA->CAT->CMA. The mental gymnastics going on today are hilarious to observe.
It always pissed me off when people would bring up ARM and how that was going to be the same way, it’s like one deal is about chips that power rockets, powerplants and every day computers and the other is about vidya games shooty bang bang lol they’re not the same.
I check in last night, no news. I check in today and there are 128 new comments in this thread . This deal is a rollercoaster. Oh, and it is over. Done. End of story. In (probably) 2 months this sale will close.
You tryna get killed over there?
. This deal is a rollercoaster. Oh, and it is over. Done. End of story. In (probably) 2 months this sale will close.
