While Microsoft looks like it has a fight on its hands with the UK CMA — and potentially the US FTC — over its Activision Blizzard acquisition, in a new twist today - China has reportedly approved the deal.
According to the financial analysts over at SeekingAlpha (via Dealreporter), China's antitrust regulator has given the merger the go-ahead. According to the report, the Asian nation has "granted unconditional approval for the deal" during a 'Phase III' review.
We must admit that we didn't expect to see China approve this acquisition before the UK and the US, but here we are. For now this is just a report, and we'll be keeping our eye out for any sort of official confirmation from the country's regulator.
Meanwhile, the UK government appears to applying some pressure on the CMA to get the deal passed in the region, especially after the European Commission approved the deal earlier this month thanks to the cloud gaming remedies Microsoft put forward.
Where else will approve this merger before the UK? Outer Mongolia? Leave your best guess down below.
[source seekingalpha.com]
Comments 36
Of course they did, they don't want to bring attention to the size of Tencent — the largest video game company in the world, even with Activision-Blizzard under Microsoft.
Edit: Tencent also has the largest Cloud Streaming Services platform in the world, although it's currently a B2B product.
Australia/New Zealand deadline is June 9th.
South Korea deadline could be earlier.
I've no idea who else is left.
112% happening!
Removed - unconstructive
@Kaloudz @UnusedBabyWipes Apparently Jim Ryan has been having lots of dialogue with Saturn's moon Titan and is fairly confident they'll reject the acquisition.
If they go against it then the other 123 moons are likely to follow suit.
@Kaloudz Whatever. I guess some of us just like our moons with clouds, rain, rivers, lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.
“Oh, yeah, it’s all coming together.”
CMA most be feeling the heat, Satya seemed very confident in his last interview and UK government is investigating with chairman of CMA for the block, this demonstrates the real power Microsoft have
LOL. Probably one of the most communist countries in the world has no issue with the acquisition, but two of the most supposedly free markets in the world (UK and US) are against the acquisition.
That shows that free market politics are just as bad, if not worse then communism.
And to boot probably one of the biggest losers from this deal would be Tencent, a Chinese company. That is really screwed up.
I've said this a few times but this isn't unexpected, despite that you'd think otherwise with Microsoft being a competitor of china's alternate Internet, etc.
Tencent is a major ABK shareholder that gets big money over value from the buyout. That means certain party members get a big payday as Tencent and the party are part and parcel. And as is normal in Chinese business, pay the right officials in the right order and you can do anything. This was always going to go through in China because the people voting on it are the people getting cash from it.
But it's an amazing irony that consumers, distributors, competitors, Europe, and even the Chinese Communist Party can all agree this merger is fine, but the home of the East India Trading Company sees only disaster.
@NeoRatt lol if you think China is actually communist.
@Fenbops
It is ruled by the "Communist Party of China". Whether they are following the idea of communism perfectly is another story. But from all views China is a communist country.
@Kaloudz Intelligent? Nope. I just Googled 'Saturn's Moon Titan' and copied and pasted. 🤣🤣🤣
@101Force Yes, no one's heard of them yet they own a significant proportion of the global market. And are probably state funded. Still if no one enjoyed their games they wouldn't be so big.
Not really shocked if China approved. I think Australia will be an interesting one?
@Stormageddon Thanks for insight your honour.
I expect you'll be able to explain (in legal terms) why Microsoft are still pushing forward if it's already over???
@NeoRatt "That shows that free market politics are just as bad, if not worse then communism." that is.... quite a leap.
@Utena-mobile what about Cuba?
@Stormageddon the cma win 67% of appeals
@Stormageddon The "every country" bit is not a legal requirement imposed by trade law, it's part of the contract between ABK and MSFT. An agreement that can be amended and renewed should it be required and both parties agree, which, with approval of all but UK, and US awaiting a court date that's basically a success guarantee, means, for the board members and relevant major stake holders it equates to: "sign here if you'd like $500M+ more in your bank account within 2-4 business days."
@Fenbops It's an authoritarian semi-police state ruled by a single party which happens to be the Communist party. I mean, you can go there and question the self-declared Communist's commitment to the teachings of Marx & Engels, at which point some very bad things would probably happen to you, which would really act as confirmation that they are, indeed, true practitioners of the principles of Communism....
@Utena-mobile Its funny but EVERYONE in Gaming Forums - especially one's catered to 'console' gaming spectrum of gamers only think of 'Gaming' as split between Xbox and Playstation with Nintendo off doing their own thing.
As such, Sony is 'the 'big' player in the market so must be the 'top' dog and Xbox is ONLY competing with Sony so taking CoD away is a 'Disaster' - despite what it means is that MS as a Publisher can 'Compete' with TenCent or Amazon/Google when they do enter the 'streaming' market and buy up Embracer and/or Ubisoft for example for 'their' competing service, taking them 'away' from 'Physical' purchasers but 'available' on devices you 'own' for a Sub fee to stream it too - reach 'more' gamers than they could who are 'hardware' based as those can still 'play' on their Hardware too if they 'stream' it via their Sub service....
It ALSO means that MS games - inc ABK future made games will be available to play 'locally' on any Windows device, play 'anywhere' purchases - so I can 'buy' Cod knowing its the 'full' package - not missing content because 'deals' on Windows hardware (Xbox for example) digitally and be able to play it on my PC or RoG Ally or whatever device I can play it on I already own 'forever' essentially - not locked to Sony's ONLY platform and need to buy PC games again to play - as a Consumer who 'games' on both, I still think that is 'better' for Consumers as they have 'more' choice where to play their 'digitally' owned games in the future - as much as Steam or 'PC' game Libraries can offer at least...
@NEStalgia yeah… it’s complicated 🤣 We all know ‘The communist party of China’ are communist in name only, they’re really a dictatorship lead country of inequality, with vast wealth at the top and the peasants underneath. Which is against the core principle of communism. But I will concede that they are true communists in some ways, they’ll take what they want and do anything to get it, sticking to the very teachings you mentioned.
I'm expecting game journalists to say that people who buy/own a Xbox is supporting communism because China approved the acquisition.
@Utena-mobile
I did say: "Probably one of the most communist countries in the world". I did not say it was the most communist country.
@Stormageddon Doesn’t matter. It needs to be approved by EVERY country that Microsoft does business in. It has been blocked. The end.
Maybe in you and your keyboards world that’s how it works, but in the real world this deal is far from over, it’s also not a guarantee. But the UK doesn’t get to stop business around the world cause of their decision.
I didn't think china would care about the acquisition.
@Stormageddon
What the FTC were trying to do with their court date was run down the clock, which the CMA situation allows both of them to do perfectly legally.
It would be like a particularly lazy cop deciding to block off a major road, with him just sitting in his car, reading a book or eating some doughnuts, with him telling anyone who beeped their horn to shut up until he was finished.
After he's finished, everyone's likely got sick of waiting and has gone a different route. Whatever reason he had for blocking the road, he sorts it and then goes off on his way. As far as he's concerned, he's done his job properly.
If the CMA force Microsoft and ABK to cancel the deal because the deal expired, since the CMA refused to let them set an extension until the FTC decision, well, they've done what they went out to do. Job's done, no problems...
...except every country who approved of the deal is furious because one lone voice decided to be a pedantic little *****.
@Kaloudz @__jamiie Now, we don't Google, we Bing and get Microsoft Rewards 😉.
@Stormageddon MS doesn't have to PULL out of the UK or 'Lose' the deal - they have other avenues too.
They also don't have to 'invest' in UK business - inc Game Devs or their UK based Studios. Not to say they 'close' them down, but don't have to 'invest' in them or make it easy for other UK studios to get their Games on Xbox, Promote and/or make them easily accessible (like put them in Game Pass - independent 3rd Party UK studio games) and/or be particularly active in the UK - choose to invest more and more into Europe - buy more European Studios and maybe 'eventually' move their 'UK' based Studios out of the UK - or their IP's away to EU/US based developers.
It could be very 'detrimental' to UK gamers and see MS opting to 'invest' more and more into European countries, European developers etc because they are 'Open' for business...
@Stormageddon right, two choices not the deal is just dead and MS CEO was on live TV and did not dismiss doing something different in the UK if need be. In a perfect world the CMA would realize the deal works and they can’t do math. They were not even close to the right math of Cloud users and market share. So while i don’t have a clue if they will revisit and change their minds, but the UK is completely happy with the CMA decision. So things could get interesting fast. Especially if everyone else approves which is looking more and more likely. With a big deal like this there is no certainties, but the deal is not just dead without the UK.
@BeerIsAwesome Nah that's the impostor
@BeerIsAwesome Funny youd mention DuPont, the easy approval of the merger between DuPont and Dow-Corning is one of my examples of mergers way more dangerous than this!
They did technically split chemical from non chemical so there's 2 monopolies in 2 industries rather than 1 monopoly in 2 industries, so, yay for structural remedies!
@BeerIsAwesome That's really the only negative, I think if they guaranteed Bobby's execution, all agencies would approve and offer a tax break to encourage it.
Even China is on board. Lol. The UK is going to be standing alone.
@Stormageddon I own both so I don't care as well. But, almost everyone is on board for this to happen, excluding the UK. This will absolutely happen.
Unions are for the merger, so of course China would be.
But I wouldn't expect any gaming journalist to be aware of that outside of Kotaku.
@Kaloudz good find buddy, thanks for the post.😊
@Kaloudz I’ll look through when I get time cheers bud.
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