The EU has announced they have assigned a monitor to check up on Microsoft’s Activision deal.
As shared by Florian Mueller, the regulator has assigned wealth management and accountancy firm Evelyn Partners as Monitoring Trustee on their behalf.
If you have been following this deal for the last few months, you may already understand what this monitor is for. The EU should of course, remain responsible for monitoring Microsoft’s actions as the new partner/owner of Activision Blizzard King in Europe.
But that work does incur some degree of expense in terms of money, and more importantly, time and effort. Having an assigned monitor simply offloads that work for the European Commission. If Evelyn Partners finds that Microsoft has not been following the deal, they can simply contact the European Commission, to do their own investigation and take it from there.
Microsoft had previously offered that they would pay for the expense of having a monitor. While such an arrangement would be convenient for the EU, it would also open up issues if the monitor could be trusted to be impartial in their work. It isn’t clear if the EU took Microsoft’s offer up in such an arrangement here, but they probably didn’t.
And for those who need a refresher, the EU rejected the console theory of harm applying to the Microsoft Activision deal. So, Evelyn Partners will be monitoring if Microsoft meets their commitments only when it comes to cloud gaming.
Aside from this arrangement allowing EU to move on from the deal, it should be a move that will give the FTC and the CMA reason to give pause.
The FTC has already lost their bid to block the deal in federal court, but that doesn’t mean they no longer have any say on the deal. While any future attempt to sue the deal away is unlikely to prosper, they could still justify some sort of regulation towards the deal.
The American regulator may be best served assigning a monitor as well. The current FTC seems determined to push their agenda on other cases. They may be better served giving the job of checking up on Microsoft to another entity, while they do so.
The CMA, on the other hand, is unofficially, informally feeling the pressure to make changes to their decision, by their higher ups in the UK government. While the CMA says they are waiting on Microsoft’s newest offer, they may choose to assign a monitor for the deal after they figure out the details.
All these regulators have other cases and deals to look out for in the immediate and near future. The EU’s decision is a strong signal of how easy it is to signal they are serious about regulation, while not getting in the way of deals that enjoy wide support.
