New Idas post:
“ I wouldn’t say that the FTC is irrelevant, I think that they are easier to handle than other regulators (in this acquisition).
In any case, if the FTC is in the mood for a fight, they can delay things quite a bit.
What I'm expecting:
- Decisions from the majority of smaller regulators in 3-5 weeks (almost all of them will be approvals without remedies).
- Decisions from the CMA, EC and SAMR in late April - early May. The CMA is still the main obstacle there, but things look easier now.
- If everyone approves it, I think that MS will offer the same remedies to the FTC to sign a consent decree and be done with this merger by late June. An interesting topic is what remedies MS would offer, because if the CMA and EC approve the deal, the issues about the console market are non existent. But the FTC had concerns about the console, subscription services and cloud gaming markets. So, does MS offer remedies to the FTC only about cloud gaming or the rest too?
- Then the big question mark: the FTC accepts the remedies or rejects them and goes to court? Yesterday, Lisa Khan said that bad precedent is better than non precedent at all. Was the bad precedent from the Meta case enough or they need more?
Important to remember that the FTC Staff didn’t recommend to challenge the Meta case, but Khan overruled them and went ahead. Something similar could happen here, I guess.
The idea is that even if the FTC has potentially a weak case, if they are in the mood for more “bad precedent”, we are going to be here until late 2023 - early 2024. Meanwhile, MS will need to change the merger agreement to close the deal without them (the approval from the FTC is a requirement to close the deal).
So, the FTC is not a huge obstacle in theory, but they are not irrelevant because they can delay the whole process 6-9 extra months. Of course, those extra months would provide more insights about the industry and the case.
We’ll see what’s happens. “
seems fairly reasonable, and I am quite optimistic about the deal still
