Turkey Unconditionally Approves Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Acquisition - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 13 July 2023 / 5,118 Views
Activision Blizzard CCO and EVP Corporate Affairs Lulu Cheng Meservey via Twitter has announced regulators in Turkey have approved Microsoft's proposed merger of Activision Blizzard.
"Today, Turkey unconditionally approved our merger with Microsoft," said Cheng. "Now, yet another country has arrived at a thoughtful decision that protects consumers and competition rather than the entrenched dominance of the market leader."
Today, Turkey unconditionally approved our merger with Microsoft.
— Lulu Cheng Meservey (@lulumeservey) July 13, 2023
Now, yet another country has arrived at a thoughtful decision that protects consumers and competition rather than the entrenched dominance of the market leader.
The deal has now officially been approved in Turkey, South Africa, South Korea, China, the European Union, Ukraine, Japan, Chile, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Serbia.
Microsoft did win its case in the US against the FTC has Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley denied the preliminary injunction the FTC was seeking. However, the FTC has since filed an appeal to get the ruling overturned.
Activision Blizzard is set to be removed from the Nasdaq-100 ESG Index before the market opens on Monday, July 17, suggesting Microsoft is getting ready to close its acquisition of the gaming publisher.
There is still a question mark on what is happening in the UK. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK in April blocked Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition, however, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard has appealed the decision. The hearings for the appeal were set to start on July 24, however, the CMA and Microsoft have decided to pause litigation to work out a new deal.
CMA media officer Billy Proudlock this week said iscussions with Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are "at an early stage" and the two companies are considering how the transaction could be modified.
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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Quite a good legal and economic argument is being made on a daily basis for the removal of the FTC and the CMA, and every other anti-trust/market regulator. Basically three top level reasons:
- bad information
- compromised/not disiniterested members
- the existence of market share domination doesn't ipso facto imply monopoly (price setting) power.
- that the micro theory they use to examine anti-trust cases is so sensitive to arbitrary market definition as to make the whole process unpredictable, costly and ineffective.
You realise that if you remove these instances it would also mean hunting season is opened for China and Saudi Arabia amongst others.
Yes but no. FTC and CMA are supposed to look only at monopoly power. So even in their current bloated forms they don't block China/Saudis for these reasons. The Government itself does that and cites security reasons. Eg. China blocked from 5G network in the UK.
However it is definitely true that these organisations take on their own peculiar missions. The FTC under Lina Khan has in large part dedicated itself to supporting foreign powers (the EU and China) in undermining US tech giants, and even has permanent staff in Europe helping them implement their GDPR rules against US firms which they know Chinese companies will flout. I don't think Khan is evil - she's just been an anti-tech campaigner her whole life, and is demonstrating that age-old and disastrous human tendency to prioritise tactics over strategy.
Another unconditional. Even more proof that the CMA and FTC are totally corrupt,
Also don’t forget that the EU illegally coerced & threaten to block the ABK deal due to the mostly irrelevant cloud.
The facts prove that this deal should be unconditional across the world, but corruption and bribery by corrupt Gov Agencies could only delay the inevitable.
Canada, Australia and New Zealand are also corrupt right?
I agree with you that we shouldn't just declare any regulator who opposes this as corrupt.
But I also agree with the detractors that those regulators who are fighting this are doing it for political reasons, rather than any reason related to actual competition within the industry. The FTC (for example) has been given a mandate to be tough on big mergers, so they're against it without regard to the merits (or lack thereof) of the deal, and I don't appreciate that kind of dishonesty. It's dishonest because they claim to be against the deal on its own merits, yet that seems to clearly not be true given how incredibly weak the FTC's so-called arguments are.
The FTC doesn't know what they're talking about. At one point in the trial, they asked a leading question that pre-supposed you need a Windows licence to stream an Xcloud game (???). So they're utterly clueless about the industry and its underlying technology. Their argument that Nintendo isn't competition for Microsoft and Sony is ridiculous as well. Nintendo has a different niche of the industry, but it's fair to say they're in the same industry with many of the same titles available on all three, and the Series S even competes with the Switch's price points.
The FTC repeatedly expressed concern about Microsoft immediately taking Call of Duty exclusive, a legal impossibility since Sony has a contract that runs through to the end of 2024. To say nothing of Microsoft's offer to extend it out to 10 years. And the fact that it's incredibly unlikely Microsoft would invest $69 billion and then cut off the primary revenue stream of one of its biggest properties, enraging gamers in the process who would all call Microsoft a bunch of liars if that happened (since they've been so vocal in saying it won't).
The way he puts it, it would seem everywhere and everything is corrupt.
Canada did not blocked it... Please don't talk about thing you do not understand.
Canada, just said that they will still monitor it after it closes to make sure it is okay. That's quite different.
And he def. talked specifically about CMA/US, why are you even talking about other regulators, is beyond me... He did not say that if you are cautious about the deal, you are corrupted like you implied because NZ/Canada are cautious.
UK controls all 3 countries.. coincidence right?
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are now fully separate of the UK. Shared history, but the UK has absolutely no authority in those other three countries now.
True, but they still follow the UK like lost little puppies.
I don't believe that's true. Canada not following the UK into the Coalition of the Willing's attack on Iraq as but one example. I can provide many other examples.
Isn't the UK just US is bitch now though
No, it doesn’t prove that at all.
What you fail to understand is Turkey was examining how the deal would affect the market solely in Turkey. Other countries were doing the same, and places like the US and UK can have different market situations compared to other, and the companies involved can also having differing situations as well.
For instance, PlayStation is the runaway market leader in Europe, but the gap is much tighter in the US and UK, so plausible that they could reach a different decision. Multiple people on here have pointed out flaws in the FTC’s and CMA’s reasoning, but all that points to incompetence not corruption.
You’re banding the phrase about like a buzzword to the point it has no meaning, and now you’re even accusing places like the EU who gave you want.
Also if you seriously think bribery was at play, you don’t think Microsoft would out-bribe Sony? Come on.
Turkiye
I don't get why you are downnvoted, this is what the Turkish people want to call their country. Not after a big ugly bird served at thanksgiven. Calling the country Turkey instead of Turkiye is ignorant and disrepctful.
