Activision Blizzard Shareholders Overwhelmingly Approve Microsoft Buyout

Republished By Plato

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A whopping 98% of Activision Blizzard shares have approved the proposed $68.7 billion buyout by Microsoft. There’s still a few hurdles for the deal to overcome, but so far, everything’s on track for the acquisition to be completed within this fiscal year.

Microsoft announced back in January that they had offered to acquire Activision Blizzard for an eye-watering $68.7 billion, a deal worth $95 per share and all paid for in cash. They expect to close the transaction by the end of Microsoft’s next fiscal year on 30th June 2023.

With the shareholder vote now out of the way, the deal will be heading to US government regulators to analyse its industry impact. The FTC has decided to take this one on, as opposed to the Justice Department, and it’s not entirely clear how this will go.

Compared to Microsoft’s Bethesda acquisition in early 2021, the purchase of Activision Blizzard is much, much bigger, and the FTC has changed its stance on mergers and acquisitions since Joe Biden became president and made Lina Khan the FTC Chair. The FTC and Justice Department have announced efforts to strengthen merger reviews, recognising that there is a surge in mergers and acquisitions across various industries, and in particular through tech. The FTC has already sued and effectively blocked Nvidia’s planned purchase of chipset designer ARM, and ABK share prices have tracked $20 below Microsoft’s buyout price, suggesting there’s some investor scepticism over the success of the deal.

Xbox Activision Blizzard

It’s been a busy time of year for Activision Blizzard. On one side of things, they’re gearing up for the reveal of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and have promised a complete reboot of the Warzone battle royale game, while Blizzard has gone on a spree of announcements. A new Warcraft mobile game will be revealed next week, there’s a release date for the Diablo Immortal open beta, which is now also coming to PC, the next World of Warcraft expansion has been revealed, and Overwatch 2’s closed beta kicked off this week for PC players!

Source: press release

Time Stamp: April 29, 2022