Britain hands Microsoft’s Activision deal an extra life

Merging companiesCMA CMA have long seen Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority as something of an end-of-level boss. For two years running the has blocked more deals than any other regulator, scotching ones like Meta’s acquisition of Giphy, a blameless meme-generator. This year it has been busy again, in April blocking Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a video-game maker, which had looked on track for approval elsewhere.Is the fearsome trustbuster preparing to fold? On July 11th an American court cleared the Microsoft-Activision transaction, leaving Britain as the holdout. Within hours the said it was prepared to examine a “modified” version of the transaction. Activision’s share price shot up: investors think it is game on.