Activision Will Be Jilted if Microsoft Deal Blocked, CEO Kotick Says (bloomberg.com) 26
Activision Blizzard will likely abandon a $69 billion takeover bid by Microsoft if the US Federal Trade Commission wins a ruling pausing the deal, the game maker's chief executive officer told a judge. From a report: Microsoft called Activision CEO Bobby Kotick to testify in San Francisco federal court Wednesday to reinforce its claim that the acquisition won't hurt competition in the markets for console and subscription-based games. US District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley must decide whether to halt the deal -- which has a July 18 closure deadline -- while the FTC's legal challenge to the transaction plays out. "My board's view is if the preliminary injunction is granted, we don't see how this will continue," Kotick said.
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
We never asked for this anyway.
M&A is purely Wall Street profit (Score:5, Insightful)
It rarely, if ever does anything good for either the company itself or the end users of that company's product. Most of these acquisitions should be blocked.
Re: (Score:2)
The government always is at fault for creating the current regulatory environment. None of these companies would exist in their current form without that regulation.
I mean, you can argue that M&A might save a company, but i'd argue back that no one buys a money losing operation and then just dumps funds into it. You make changes, which means letting go of people, usually. So did you save anyone?
The expectation we'll have semi-permanent employment with a game company might need some review. Economic
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The government always is at fault for creating the current regulatory environment. None of these companies would exist in their current form without that regulation.
There's multiple perspectives around how much control over the economic and regulatory environment "big bad government" truly controls. In a FREE MARKET economy, which is more libertarian than authoritarian, the effects of regulations should be properly tempered.
Different government administrations have varying methods for justifying their actions: the monetary size of the deal, the number of moving parts of the deal (incl regional footprint), the number of competitors (overall or whatever the core funct
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I would say they were fucked either way, since after a merger there is typically a bloodletting of HR/accounting/overhead functions, and they were always going to be the first to go. Either way they're on the job market, probably going to a competitor anyway.
Mergers and Acquisitions should in almost every case be blocked for the greater good to save what tiny bit of functional capitalism we have left.
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It's one thing to reduce operational redundancies (through outsourcing or function integrations regardless of parent company's liquidity situation). It's entirely different when development projects must end due to insufficient funding to keep the lights on.
Administrative overhead (which do not directly drive revenue generation/growth) should NEVER feel "safe" in their jobs regardless of micro- or macroeconomic circumstances. With every generation of automated technologies and services, these roles become less and less secure. I would argue that most of these roles should NOT be internal to begin with; outsource to specialist firms, rather than deeming them as more-valuable than whatever ACTUAL revenue centers exist within the com
Re: M&A is purely Wall Street profit (Score:3)
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Yeah somehow it's the government's fault. Fuck off with this bullshit. If the company can't compete it's their own damn fault.
Umm, yeah. Even the outgoing CEO (Kotick) is saying the exact same thing! HE WANTS OUT!
You don't have to agree with any of this, but it's still the truth. He wants his golden parachute and to disappear. MSFT stepped up and said, "ok let's try to make it happen."
At this point, it's the special interest groups influencing government agencies to prevent ACTI from doing what they want: GTFO of the stock markets, GTFO of managing the company day-to-day, and simply GTFO.
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Just because you don't necessarily agree with the prospect of additional job losses, that doesn't make the post flame-bait. In fact, I'm preemptively calling out the CEO for the inevitable blame-game he'll launch into should the deal fail.
Maybe you mods need to re-read the moderation guidelines...
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Indeed. Anything ever touched by MS starts to degrade and then stay around in a bad state for a long time. Not good.
In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
The CEO of a company that he's trying to sell testifies that this sale is perfectly fine and won't affect market competition after he's no longer CEO - almost as if he has a few million personal reasons for the sale to go through.
In other news, dog bites man; and water is still wet.
The best part of this purchase (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that Bobby Kotick will be gone afterwards.
Not that he isn't going to glide out on a golden parachute but seriously, what a loathsome caricature of CEO brain that tarnished what possibly was the most premiere gaming brand (Blizzard) outside of Nintendo .
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You think that will compensate for MS being in charge afterwards? Rather have one certified asshole at the top than a whole organization of them.
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Yes, absolutely. I don't see any of the XBox execs as bad a leader or with as long a history of cockups as Kotick.
It's not my favorite scenario, I'd prefer he was just fired or Blizzard spun off again or time machine and stop the Activision merger at the stop but MS is far from the worst of the megapublishers imo. Better than Ubi or EA that's for sure.
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Hmm. I was thinking of MS as a whole organization of assholes. On the other hand, they may just be assholes at the top and the rest is trying hard but simply incompetent.
Just for context, I recently got to compare PowerPoint and LibreOffice Impress again and the former is just a complete piece of shit, while the latter is unspectacular and generally simply lets you do your job. Everything MS touches slowly gets worse and worse.
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I feel like thats a kneejerk reaction for those of us who grew up in the 90s/00s era Microsoft but really it's a different beast now. Not that it's "good" but it's a lot of shades of grey.
Like overall Phil Spencer seems like a guy who gets the gaming market and has done some consumer friendly things. The fact that MS embraced PC as a market segment as an equal to consoles is really nice when for like 10-20 years PC was the also ran for it's niche RTS type titles and consoles got alot of attention. XBox Ga
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You can always fall deeper, especially when the new owners have deep pockets from all the crap they pulled.
Th deep-set corruption in MS is a bit harder to see these days, but not that hard. And it is getting worse.
Ok (Score:2, Funny)
So?
Now get rid of Kotick (Score:2)
Jilted (Score:2)
Re: Jilted (Score:2)
And very likely grateful for that fact.
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Gosh... (Score:2)
I sure am upset that some rich fuck isn't getting massively richer let me tell you! Might almost lose a picosecond of sleep over it. Might, almost.
Kotick can be first up to be in (Score:2)
The Running Man [imdb.com]
Fuck that guy. I wanna see him face off against Elon, Larry Ellison and other assorted corporate psychopath wastes of air.
At least we might get a Zuck fight.