Microsoft / Activision
On Thursday, Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard removed the second biggest remaining hurdle in their plan A $68.7 billion acquisition deal: Purchase of existing shareholders.
ATVI shareholders voted overwhelmingly to approve Microsoft’s bid to acquire Activision-Blizzard, and The company announcement scored more than 98 percent of the shareholder vote in the “Yes” column..
At the dollar and cents level, anyone who currently holds Activision stock would likely be interested in potential windfall cash gains on their way should the deal go through. Before the shareholder vote Thursday morning, Activision stock was trading at around $76 per share, while Microsoft’s terms of acquisition include a purchase amount of $95 per share.
FTC is next, critics claim ‘undue concentration of market power’
That stock price has fallen steadily since its bullish rally on January 18, the same day Microsoft and Activision announced a potential deal. As Bloomberg points out, the gap between the current trading price and acquisition valuation is higher than many important mergers and acquisitions hovering in the United States, in particular. The impending takeover of Twitter led by Elon Musk. Gaps like these often indicate a lack of market confidence in a proposed deal that escapes the scrutiny of regulators.
Certainly, the FTC’s approval remains the last potential hurdle for the Microsoft acquisition deal to survive before the deal begins to take formal form, and as of press time, Reports indicate that the Federal Trade Commission will take the lead in conducting an antitrust review of the transaction. This comes on the heels of the January 18 announcement (yes, the same day Microsoft announced its intentions to acquire) The Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice have sought public comment on their efforts “To better detect and prevent illegal and anti-competitive deals in today’s modern markets.”
Soon after, critics of the proposed merger between Microsoft and Activision published open letters condemning the deal and calling for antitrust aspects. One such message, Posted on March 1 and signed by 15 advocacy groupsclaimed that the deal “may lead to an undue concentration of market power when viewed as a vertical or horizontal merger, threaten data privacy and security, undermine consumer protection online, and violate the consumer’s right to reform and exacerbate worker disempowerment and wage suppression.” Rhetorical claims about Microsoft’s grip on the video game and cloud computing markets have been exacerbated by Microsoft’s bullish financial disclosures earlier this weekindicating continued jumps in revenue in both markets.
If the buyout were clear to all regulatory scrutiny, it could be argued that Microsoft would still have significant ramifications for Activision-Blizzard to deal with, primarily in the form of Ongoing legal pressure on widespread accusations of pay disparity and sexual harassment Via Activision Blizzard’s Game Studios Network. That case entered a strange new phase earlier this month when A top California attorney in the case resigned in protestciting Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to fire a lead attorney at the agency handling the state’s case.
Games keep popping up
However, Activision Blizzard is still rushing in full force regarding the release of a new video game and causing alarm. Hours after the shareholder vote ended Thursday, the company announced a countdown to new Warcraft Game announcement at 1 PM ET on Tuesday, May 3. The game in question is slated to release on mobile phones, and Blizzard has brought up “exciting news for Azeroth heroes looking to take their adventures on the go.”
This language suggests a kind of complete “adventure” in Warcraft The universe, unlike a smartphone-style puzzle game or an idle game, but it’s not necessarily a clear indication of what’s to come. For a better guess, we turn to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreyer, who Suggested on the ResetERA gaming forum earlier this week That Blizzard is currently working on at least two mobile games in Warcraft the universe, and the people he knows are “one” pokemon go [and] another one clashone”, referring to either of them clan clash or clash royale.
This news follows the much awaited beta release of Monitor 2 Finally, he went live on Tuesday, with his Twitch streams instantly smashing Blizzard’s game viewing records. Its concurrent viewership exceeded 1.4 million this week, arguably due to the promotion of Twitch which offered free trial keys to viewers as “drops” so that they could access the trial version on their PC during the three-week test. And in the less surprising Activision-related news, the company also revealed The first slogan and the excitement of the next Call of duty video game Thursday dubbed call of duty modern warfare 2— seemingly sequel to The cod Spinoff reboot of 2019versus a modified version of The original 2009 sequel (Not confusing at all, nope.)