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A federal judge has handed Microsoft a major victory by declining to block its looming $69 billion takeover of video game company Activision<\/a> Blizzard. Regulators sought to ax the deal saying it will hurt competition.<\/p>\n U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley said in a ruling that the merger deserved scrutiny, noting it could be the largest in the history of the tech industry. But federal regulators were unable to show how it would cause serious harm and wouldn\u2019t likely prevail if they took it to a full trial, she wrote.<\/p>\n The Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust laws, \u201chas not raised serious questions regarding whether the proposed merger is likely to substantially lessen competition\u201d between video game consoles or in the growing markets for monthly game subscriptions or cloud-based gaming, Corley said,<\/p>\n A ruling favorable to Microsoft was not a surprise after the company\u2019s lawyers had the upper hand in a 5-day San Francisco court hearing that ended late last month. The proceeding showcased testimony by Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and longtime Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who both pledged to keep Activision\u2019s blockbuster game Call of Duty available to people who play it on consoles \u2014 particularly Sony\u2019s PlayStation \u2014 that compete with Microsoft\u2019s Xbox.<\/p>\n \u201cOur merger will benefit consumers and workers. It will enable competition rather than allow entrenched market leaders to continue to dominate our rapidly growing industry,\u201d Kotick said in a written statement after Tuesday\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n The FTC had asked Corley to issue an injunction temporarily blocking Microsoft and Activision from closing the deal before the FTC\u2019s in-house judge can review it in an August trial.<\/p>\n Both companies suggested that such a delay would effectively force them to abandon the takeover agreement they signed nearly 18 months ago. Microsoft promised to pay Activision a $3 billion breakup fee if the deal doesn\u2019t close by July 18.<\/p>\n The FTC hasn\u2019t said whether it will appeal Corley\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are disappointed in this outcome given the clear threat this merger poses to open competition in cloud gaming, subscription services, and consoles,” FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar said in a prepared statement. \u201cIn the coming days we\u2019ll be announcing our next step to continue our fight to preserve competition and protect consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n The decision is a setback for the FTC\u2019s heightened scrutiny of the technology industry under Chairperson Lina Khan, who was installed by President Joe Biden in 2021 because of her tough stance on what she sees as monopolistic behavior by tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook parent Meta.<\/p>\n Another judge rebuffed the FTC\u2019s attempt earlier this year to stop Meta from taking over the virtual reality fitness company Within Unlimited. And on Thursday, Khan is expected to face tough questioning from Republicans in Congress who have called her to testify at a House hearing about the commission\u2019s record of enforcement actions as well as her management of the agency staff.<\/p>\n Corley, herself a Biden nominee, expressed skepticism about the FTC\u2019s case during the proceedings, particularly about the hypothetical harms caused if Microsoft were to remove Call of Duty from rival platforms or offer a subpar experience on competing consoles.<\/p>\n \u201cThe gist of the FTC\u2019s complaint is Call of Duty is so popular, and such an important supply for any video game platform, that the combined firm is probably going to foreclose it from its rivals for its own economic benefit to consumers\u2019 detriment,\u201d Corley wrote in her ruling.<\/p>\n But she said the FTC hadn\u2019t make a strong case that Microsoft would likely pull Call of Duty from rival Sony\u2019s PlayStation \u2014 in fact, Microsoft executives have repeatedly pledged not to do so.<\/p>\n As antitrust investigations and legal challenges mounted in the U.S. and around the world, Microsoft pledged that Call of Duty would appear on Nintendo\u2019s Switch console, Nvidia\u2019s cloud gaming service and other platforms for at least a decade.<\/p>\n In that way, the \u201cscrutiny has paid off,\u201d Corley concluded in her ruling, repeating a message she relayed to regulators in the courtroom last month.<\/p>\n \u201cIn many ways you won,\u201d Corley had told the FTC\u2019s lead trial attorney on the case, James Weingarten.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we won,\u201d Weingarten responded, saying there was no evidence that the \u201chastily agreed to\u201d contracts would sufficiently protect the market.<\/p>\n Shares of Activision Blizzard Inc. jumped more than 11% Tuesday on the ruling, a high for the year.<\/p>\n The ruling removes the biggest, but not the only obstacle, to the merger.<\/p>\n A number of other countries and the European Union have approved the Activision Blizzard takeover, but it still faces opposition from the U.K.\u2019s Competition and Markets Authority. The company was set to challenge that decision at a tribunal hearing scheduled for later this month but the FTC\u2019s ruling appeared to have forced a rethink.<\/p>\n The British regulator and Microsoft both said Tuesday they have jointly applied to put the hearing on hold, saying a \u201cstay of litigation\u201d would be in the public interest while they work out a way to resolve their differences so that the deal can go ahead.<\/p>\n \u201cWe stand ready to consider any proposals from Microsoft to restructure the transaction in a way that would address the concerns\u201d outlined in the merger decision, the CMA said in a prepared statement.<\/p>\n Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement that the company is looking to modify its transaction \u201cin a way that is acceptable to the CMA,\u201d though it disagrees with the agency\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n Canadian regulators are also investigating the transaction and have concluded it is \u201clikely to result\u201d in preventing or lessening competition on gaming consoles, subscription services and cloud-based gaming, according to a letter to Microsoft filed in the U.S. case late last month that echoed the FTC\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n (This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – Associated Press<\/a>)<\/i> <\/div>\n [ad_2] [ad_1] A federal judge has handed Microsoft a major victory by declining to block its looming $69 billion takeover of video game company Activision Blizzard. Regulators sought to ax the deal saying it will hurt competition. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley said in a ruling that the merger deserved scrutiny, noting it could be … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bscrackers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bscrackers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bscrackers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bscrackers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bscrackers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bscrackers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bscrackers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bscrackers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bscrackers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bscrackers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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