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New report from MLex:
- Microsoft President Brad Smith took aim at the CMA for blocking the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, saying the decision would affect investment in the UK and was based on a "faulty" understanding of the gaming market.
- He said that UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak should "look hard at the role of the CMA," and he said the European Commission's approach was far better.
- Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said: "This decision shows how important it is to support competition in the UK, and the UK is absolutely open for business."
- Investors and companies were "probably better off thinking harder about going to the European Union than to Britain," Smith said in an interview on BBC radio. "The impact of this decision is far broader than on Microsoft or this acquisition alone."
- Smith explained that the CMA had taken a narrow view of the gaming market, focused on a "potential concern" about how the "small" business might develop. "The process in Brussels worked far better than what we're now addressing in London."
- "This decision is probably the darkest day in our four decades in Britain. It does more to shake our confidence in the future of the opportunity to grow a technology business in Britain than we've ever confronted before," Smith said.
- Speaking on the same program, Cardell stressed the potential of the cloud gaming industry and that allowing Microsoft and Activision Blizzard to merge would "really harm the ability of other competing cloud platforms to compete effectively."
- Smith said the watchdog had gone silent on Microsoft two weeks ago, and then the prohibition decision arrived yesterday.
- "This is not the way regulators in Brussels work with companies. You have more of a conversation," he said, adding that Microsoft had made the same offer of concessions to the EU regulator as it did to its British counterpart.
- Cardell rejected the criticism of her office's procedures. "We conducted a lengthy in-depth investigation that took a full six months and Microsoft had ample opportunity to put their case to us."
- "We reached the decision on the basis of a huge amount of engagement. We looked at more than a million documents to reach our final decision," Cardell said.
- Smith said the "English Channel has never seemed wider" regarding the attractiveness of investments and the regulator process.
- Smith described Brussels as "a place where one can sit down and actually have a conversation with the regulators who are accountable to the elected leaders. And the difference we now confront in London, where we have regulators who are not only unelected but unaccountable, and now making decisions that just feel fundamentally unwise."
- According to Brad Smith, "I am optimistic that the European Commission will continue to go forward, as it has signaled in recent weeks and months, that it will regard the very promises that the CMA has rejected as far more appropriate."
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Boy is angry daddy's money isn't getting him a toy...... Shut up and stop avoiding taxes 
