Ukraine Becomes 7th Country to Approve Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Acquisition - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 27 April 2023 / 8,430 Views
The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, the regulator in Ukraine, announced it has approved Microsoft’s $67.8 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The regulator in its findings said the deal would not negatively affect competition in the video game market in Ukraine.
The regulator did mention concerns with cloud gaming expressed by the European Commission, the European Union regulator, as well as the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK regulator, in its final decision blocking the deal.
Concerns related to cloud gaming are irrelevant in Ukraine as the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine stated "Microsoft and Activision Blizzard do not carry out economic activities in the field of cloud gaming services in Ukraine, therefore, the concerns expressed by the European Commission and the reasons for the ban in Great Britain are not relevant for assessing its impact of the acquisition on the dynamics of competition in Ukraine."
Ukraine is the seventh country to approve the deal, following South Africa, Japan, Chile, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Serbia.
The European Commission has a deadline of May 22, 2023 to reach its final verdict on the deal. Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are planning to appeal the CMA decision to block the deal to the CAT in the UK. Microsoft is also facing a lawsuit by the FTC in the US.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Slava Ukraini!
And fuck Russia!!
7 out of 195 countries! Long way to go.
Getting there... Getting there :)
Rome wasn't built in a day.
Only 16 regulators are working on the approval process for this.
To most countries this acquisition is completely irrelevant, they don't have any noteworthy video game business or don't even have regulators for things like this at all.
A day after Ukraine approved the deal MS moved to keep supporting business in Russia, that must have sting a little.
Stupid question but why do all these countries need to approve it? Shouldn't it only matter in the country where both are the parent company? or is it any country they both do business in have a say?
It was funny seeing Lulu with a very smart "regulators that approved of the buy and intelligent and reasonable the ones that don't approve are irrational and want to destroy economy", back to cold war I guess.
That more sounds like, at best, he is basing the entire global situation of the deal on its Brazillian outlook, rather than the varying situation with the deal in other countries. It's funny given politicians of Lulu's ilk usually are opposed to big business deal like this rather than wanting to wave them through.
So another country approves the deal with no conditions.
UK US corruption is confirmed, once gain.
Ah huh sure . Everything and everything is corrupt. Time to pull Tin foil hats .if anything goes well for ms it’s corrupt ? Ok I So by that logic Sony is corrupt (more corrupt) and Nintendo (least one out of the 3)
Ukraine was well known as the most corrupt country in Europe before the praetorian guard of the American Military Industrial Complex attempted to alter the narrative on this well documented fact. That democracy isn't going to spread itself......In addition to this, Microsoft is directly involved in assisting Ukraine against Russia in the grotesque proxy war currently ravaging their country. Nothing to see here.
Russia is in Europe. =)
Absolutely hilarious that you actually think Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe, does Ukraine have corruption? Absolutely, a lot of countries do, Europe has made it clear to them that they'd need to fix that if they want to join the European Union.
Ironically, a lot of Ukraine's corruption is a result of Russia's years of manipulation to the country, the 4th President of Ukraine was a Russian stooge who got promptly booted from his country.
America hasn't been trying to alter anything. They're simply helping a country defend itself against an unlawful, disgusting invasion, and what does Russian democracy look like? Levelling entire cities? Raping women? Killing children? Genocide against Ukrainians as a people?
Microsoft is involved in assisting Ukraine in the grotesque illegal invasion of Ukraine committed by Russia by aiding them against hacking attempts because Microsoft is on the right side of history on this, you are not.
Slava Ukraini. =)
Yeah, I'm going to give you a big negatory on that one, buddy joe.
In the 8-9 years since Russia began armed conflict with Ukraine, Ukraine has become progressively less corrupt, and Russia has become significantly more corrupt. Last I checked Zelensky hasn't murdered any of his political opponents, whereas Putin doing so is routine.
Just because you don't agree with something doesn't make those on the other side 'corrupt'
Also, Ukraine would have looked at how the deal affect their economy and the UK theirs, which would have resulted in different scenarios due to differing market conditions and the different level of activity MS/ABK have there. So you're comparing apples and oranges.
