Today I found out that actually that Illumina/Grail deal (in a market where illumina commands 80% market share) and that was blocked by EU…FTC failed with its lawsuit against that deal
Recession and making less billions =/= bleeding money
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No kidding
They are not bleeding money as Ive already pointed out. Bleeding money is a term that refers to companies not turning a positive income and are burning through a stockpile of cash reserves.
Microsoft is adding 18 billion dollars to their cash reserves every 3 months. Has there been a slight decrease from the previous year in terms of income, yes. However they are still making more income than theyve done any year other than 2021.
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I was hoping for Diablo IV to be on Game Pass day one too but I don’t see it happening and to be honest, I will probably just buy the Series X version with the season pass or whatever because it’s going to be a long term game and anything past the base game isn’t going to go on Game Pass anyway.
IconEra??? lol
Projects get cancelled so they can refocus on things and sometimes those staff can’t be retrained into roles within the company, it’s quite simple really.
I read Idas breakdown of Microsofts 111 page rebuttal. Suffice to say, sounds like a lot of woe is me doom and gloom.
Yeah I read the whole 111pages and pretty much all their arguments are great, some a bit iffy but almost all are solid and any proper regulator looking into it should be seriously taking it all into proper consideration.
This whole FTC sue thing is a bit blown up, according to Hoeg the M&A lawyer, the FTC readies lawyers up before negotiations take place in case they need to make a case and then can use it against Microsoft as a threat if they don’t agree to terms. So all of this seems to be normal and not like Microsoft are getting sued or they have planned to sue, it’s just procedural things they always do.
I do wonder if this is Sony doing some PR work to continue to cast doubt over everything.
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Yeah, I dont think its an accident that this “leak” came right after the Microsoft 10 year COD offer with parity was mentioned publicly.
Could be Sony, it could also have been the FTC leaking that in order to put pressure on Microsoft to cave more readily in their upcoming conversations with Microsofts lawyers.
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I think there is also a wild misunderstanding between suing to block and outright blocking the deal. The FTC even if they did sue have no power to actually block the deal.
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That site is trash and filled with rabid fanboys. I dont know how why you try debating those idiots.
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A few are reasonable and I have some good debates there but most, not so much.
One interesting article regarding FTC and their stance
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/09/ftcs-new-stance-litigate-dont-negotiate-lina-khan
Basically
No wonder they are running out of budget all the time. Rather than investigating mergers they prefer going to courts. Essentially they strategy boils down - “you should prove that the merger should be allowed, and not us” 
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Admittedly I am not an expert in American mergers but I thought it is the other way round: The FTC would be the ones who has to prove the merger should not take place as in America they don’t approve mergers or acquisitions, they only chose whether to block them or not. This is different in Europe where the merger or acquisition has to literally get approved.
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FTC does not approve the deals indeed, but the point is that FTC wants to sue the deals (unjustifiably or not like with Meta/Within) more rather trying to reach a compromise. And it might have an adverse effect. Like for example ABK deal seems to have a clause that if it does not close until the certain point, MS and ABK has to renegotiate their deal.
Essentially she and some other folks are the part “competition for the competition sake” movement.
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It’s not a bad movement, but with all things imo it needs to be approached with some caution. Just sueing or threatening to do so everytime to try and get concessions instead of keeping an eye on the market.
Will build a reputation that will get companies being aggressive for every merger instead of waiting on them to do their jobs. Companies will just sue them preemptively everytime they feel the deal could pass without any issues or just to keep them from meddling. Putting the FTC in a situation where they have to prove they should be allowed to do their job.
Everything that is done out of spite is bad. It is like buying something for the sake of buying - no logic behind that.
How much would Oculus achieve if Meta was not trying to throw money at them if FTC proclaimed that Meta could not buy them because they had resources to make VR themselves? We would have several companies doing VR but none of them could push forward due to lack of resources while Meta would waste years reinventing the wheel
Well no, because Facebook would have just approached Oculus with either a partnership or poached their employees to start their own VR company.
That makes them seem like a rather lame duck in all honesty. Activision is prepared to fight for the deal, are they counting on acquisitions to be put it in the “too hard basket” or something? Unless im misunderstanding this would not face rich companies with prestigious law firms, but rather punish businesses that cant afford to bring a case.
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It is very strange when I see my country (Brazil) get the decision right quickly while the countries that should be more organized look like a big mess.
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