I agree with everything in Peter’s post. Based on the economics, there is nothing of concern in this acquisition at all.
About 18 months ago, shortly after the acquisition was announced, I posted this:
I stand by everything in that post, though I probably could have phrased a couple of points more clearly. What I completely failed to account for was the amount of politics/ideology/regulatory capture that was going to infect the proceedings.
In a more economically rationale world the regulators would have done their analysis without trying to gerrymander markets or prognosticate what the industry would look like ten or more years down the road - something they have literally zero ability to do - and reached a swift conclusion that there was no problem with the deal. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. But it looks like rationality will win out at the end of the day regardless.
Economically the deal didn’t need any conditions at all. However, I think the EU conditions are actually pretty good and will help the cloud market grow so I don’t really have a problem with them.
As far as the FTC specifically, when its expert came back with a “worst case” scenario that PlayStation might lose 5% market share that should have been the end of its investigation. Economically, who cares if the market leader with 70% global market share loses 5%? It’s a complete non-issue. The amount of intellectual dishonesty required for the FTC to carry on after that point is completely mind blowing. I can’t even process it.
I truly hope we are coming to the end of this long saga over the next few days - and I truly hope some regulators have learned a few lessons from this that will encourage them to behave better in the future.
Edit: This is not an “I was right” post. If you go back and read the linked post you can clearly see I was very wrong about how this played out. I really didn’t think the deal would encounter nearly as much trouble as it has. Rather, this is me saying, “I was wrong, but it looks like everything is still ok.”