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The purchase of Activision Blizzard adds a new chapter, after the approval of the operation in territories such as South Korea or China was confirmed. To these two Asian countries we must add the approval of the European Union, which arrived a few weeks ago, and which has been celebrated by both Bobby Kotick and Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, who in recent statements has assured that he will of offer the necessary remedies for the operation to come to fruition.
It must be remembered that the purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft has already been approved in 10 different jurisdictions, being the European Union the most important of them all (together with China). The body of the European territory decided to approve the purchase by not finding competition problems in the operation, conditioning the deal to a series of concessions related to cloud gaming.
The president of Microsoft: “we will be creative and determined”
The acceptance of these concessions makes it clear that Redmond is willing to work hand in hand with the regulators to try to find a solution that leads to the approval of the agreement. And it’s something that your President has made it clear in recent statements. Brad Smith, in an interview offered to CNN, has assured that they are focused “in finding a solution to each problem, because I believe that the solutions are there”.
You can count on us to want to be creative, to want to be constructive, and frankly to be determined to keep working to find a solution that takes the good out of this and then to make those benefits available to everyone.
For now, there is only two regulators who have positioned themselves against of the operation: the CMA and the FTC. The highest competition authority in the United Kingdom decided to block the acquisition a few weeks ago, whose first appeal hearing occurred just a couple of days ago, with a small victory for Microsoft. While the FTC, despite not issuing its final decision, has always positioned itself against this operation.
The president of Microsoft was ironic on this issue, assuring that “Now, obviously, we still haven’t managed to address all the concerns of all the regulators, but at the end of the day you have to decide: do you want to find a solution to every problem, or do you want to find a problem with every solution?”making a clear reference to the two organizations mentioned.
The faces, Juan, the faces! These have been the embarrassing reactions of the CMA lawyers
we are xbox.com
There is still a lot of cloth to be cut on this issue, but if Microsoft can bring reason to the CMA and the FTC, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard will become a reality. For now, we will have to wait a few more weeks to know what definitely happens.