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Ryuu96 on 14 March 2023
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EpicRandy said:
Ryuu96 said:

It absolutely does matter if CMA blocks the deal, Lol.

If they block the deal then it's either...

  • Appeal to CAT; Decision thrown back to CMA.
  • Abandon the merger.
  • Microsoft pulls out of UK and/or faces massive fines.

[...]

I also did entertain the idea MS could just pull out of the UK market upon a negative decision as this deal amount to many times the revenue from UK Xbox gets. However since MS his making the deal and not Xbox the move would be prohibitively drastic. 

There's also another avenue I believe MS can try which is challenging the UK government constitutionally. MS could challenge the CMA mandate in itself rather than the decision it renders. It could try to argue that the procedure and non-oversight of the body have allowed them to make decision that disregard the actual legality of a proposed merger, and base said decision on along partisan line or personal view which also leave the body vulnerable to lobbying. If MS were to take this route the deal would likely be already dead though but could ask compensation to the UK government for any arm done to MS which would be a staggering  amount here and they would likely be join in their fight by other entity like Meta.

Yeah, I think what I read was that Microsoft can't pull only ABK out of the UK market without facing massive fines and obviously pulling out Microsoft entirely is completely unrealistic, I think the fines don't exactly have a limit either so it wouldn't be be some insignificant number. Plus CMA in the PF's are stating they want the concessions to apply worldwide apparently.

One of the lawyers on Era was talking about the fines limit, I forgot what they said exactly but it was basically like, it'd be a huge amount, every year. So if Microsoft even attempted the above, they'd face a massive political shitstorm, fines up the ass and likely wouldn't be a good look to other regulators because it'd basically be Microsoft saying they don't care what you say, we'll just pull out of your market, Lol.

Yeah, I think I like your idea, Lol. Unfortunately won't mean much for the deal though as you said.

I'm really interested in seeing how Microsoft fights CMAs decision if it comes down to it, I really want to know what they try to argue to CAT...But it's a bit funny that even if CAT agrees with Microsoft and says CMA made a mistake, they just tell CMA to make another decision which can be another block, Lol.