Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal is back in the hands of Britain's antitrust regulator after an appeals court granted an adjournment, and the grounds for why the UK should reconsider its block on the US software giant's takeover were published.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) set out on
Friday Microsoft's arguments for the reconsideration, as the US battles to win
UK approval to buy Call of Duty maker Activision.
Having initially blocked the $69 billion deal in April over
concerns about its impact on competition in the cloud gaming market, the CMA
has since reopened the file, after it was left increasingly isolated amongst
world regulators in its opposition.
The CMA said it is likely to be able to reach a new
provisional view on the restructured deal in the week beginning August 7.
Explaining why the deal should now be given the green light,
Microsoft argued that the binding commitments accepted by the European Union
shortly after Britain had blocked the deal changed matters, court documents
published showed.
The software company gave legally-binding commitments to
European authorities that Activision games can be streamed for a decade after
the merger, and has entered into agreements with Nvidia, Boosteroid and Ubitus.
As part of that a monitoring and enforcement regime will be
established, which Microsoft said should ease some of the CMA's concerns.
Microsoft also argued that the terms of the CMA's proposed
block reached further than necessary to tackle its cloud gaming concerns, for
example in covering Activision Blizzard's King unit, which makes mobile device
games like Candy Crush Saga.
The CMA said it understood that Microsoft considered the
recent licensing deal it agreed with Sony constituted a further material change
of circumstance or special reason.
For its part, the CMA dismissed as "irrelevant and
immaterial" to its decision to look again at the deal the failure by US
authorities to get it blocked in the courts there.
Britain's Competition Appeal Tribunal provisionally approved the adjournment on Monday subject to further submissions from the parties. It formally granted it on Friday. © Reuters
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