As they are looking to meet the deadline of their takeover deal, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft have asked a US judge to speed up the legal processes started by the Federal Trade Commission.
Activision Blizzard and Microsoft are racing against time to meet the deadline of their $69 billion takeover deal. They have asked a US judge to speed up the legal processes started by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to stop the merger. US District Judge Edward Davila had already set up a meeting on June 22 and 23 in San Francisco to hear evidence. He also temporarily stopped the deal from going through until another judge on the same court decides whether or not to give a preliminary injunction.
At the next meeting, the main question will be whether or not to put the deal on hold while an administrative judge looks into the case. But the companies said that if a brief hold is put on the deal, they would have to give up on it because the FTC review is taking so long that waiting is not a good idea.
In a court statement, the companies stressed how important it was, saying that the deal ends on July 18 and that Microsoft would have to pay a $3 billion fee to get out of it. “It is very important to realize that the only decision that matters in these tight time limits is the decision on the preliminary injunction,” the filing said. Reuters said that the FTC wouldn’t say anything about the situation. Microsoft and Activision asked the court to give the evidentiary hearing at least five days, starting on June 22 and going through the week of June 26.
They also suggested a case management meeting on Thursday, stressing that their request for a longer hearing was not meant to drag out the process. The companies said that if the FTC’s preliminary injunction is upheld, it would essentially stop the whole deal because the FTC’s methods are so slow that no serious business deal could wait that long. They used a case from 1986 to back up their point. The FTC’s administrative process meeting, on the other hand, is set to start on August 2.
The FTC is worried that the deal will give Microsoft’s Xbox the only way to play Activision games, which will hurt Nintendo devices and Sony Group Corp’s PlayStation. Even though the takeover was okayed by the European Union in May, it had been stopped by British competition authorities in April.
Activision Blizzard and Microsoft are racing against time to meet their $69 billion takeover deadline. They have asked a US judge to speed up the legal processes started by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to stop the merger. The FTC is worried that the deal will give Microsoft’s Xbox the only way to play Activision games, which will hurt Nintendo devices and Sony Group Corp’s PlayStation. The FTC’s administrative process meeting is set to start on August 2.
