EC Rules Adobe's $20B Buy Of Figma Will Kill Competition
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The transaction would represent the most expensive sale of a privately owned software company in history, and was flagged as a concern by 16 member states of the European Union in February, such is the lack of credible alternatives to Adobe on the market.
The EC leaned in for an in-depth investigation of the merger in August, and late on Friday evening - in the Euro time zone - it delivered the damning preliminary verdict in a Statement of Objections.
"As a result of this in-depth investigation, the commission reached the preliminary conclusion that the transaction may significantly reduce competition in the global markets," the EC said.
[...] By erasing Figma as a competitive hurdle, Adobe would also tighten its grip on the supply of vector and raster editing tools, the EC added.
"Figma already exerts a significant constraining influence on Adobe's vector editing tool, Adobe Illustrator, as well as on Adobe's raster editing tool, Photoshop. Moreover, absent the transaction, Figma is significantly likely to enter these markets and grow into an effective competitive force," it said.
[...] Adobe had wanted to get the deal done by the close of this calendar year but that is now definitely not going to be the case, with the case files to be publicly updated in February.
In October, Adobe told us of the CMA investigation: "We remain confident in the merits of the case as Figma's product design is an adjacency to Adobe's core creative products and Adobe has no meaningful plans to compete in the product design space."
[...] The combination of Adobe and Figma will deliver significant value to customers by making product design more accessible and efficient, reimagining creative capabilities on the web and creating new categories of creativity and productivity.
"We remain confident in the merits of our case, as Figma's product design is an adjacency to Adobe's core creative products and Adobe has no meaningful plans to compete in the product design space. We will continue to engage constructively with the European Commission to address their concerns and are confident we can address them."
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.