The insanity and activity surrounding Microsoft’s imminent acquisition of Activision Blizzard has only ramped up as the deal prepares to be finalized. This month alone, a judge denied the FTC’s injunction request to halt the proceedings, the FTC attempted to appeal the decision and tried to get the Ninth Circuit to pause the deal, the FTC was then overruled again, and the key parties involved in the deal chose to extend it until October 18th to finish negotiations with the UK’s CMA.
If that’s not drama enough for the moment, we can pivot over to the U.S. Supreme Court, which this week denied a consumer-led request to block Microsoft’s acquisition of ABK.
Readers will recall that we’ve been following this consumer-led antitrust lawsuit since December of last year, but it was dismissed with leave to refile with more detail back in March – which is exactly what the plaintiffs did, and then they were rejected again. And following the FTC’s loss in court last week, the plaintiffs also filed an emergency application for an injunction before the Supreme Court. The court – specifically Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan – has now rejected that one too.
