New Report Suggests Microsoft’s Purchase Of Activision Blizzard Will Be Approved By EU Soon

Anti-trust reg­u­laors in the Euro­pean Union will be approv­ing Microsoft­’s $68.7 bil­lion acqui­si­tion of Activi­sion Bliz­zard, and it could be as soon as this com­ing Mon­day, May 15th, accord­ing to a Reuters report.

Ini­tial­ly, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion had stat­ed a deci­sion would be final­ized by May 22nd, but this announce­ment could come a week before then, Reuters writes.

Approval from the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion is real­ly no big sur­prise, as Microsoft pres­i­dent Brad Smith has said. Reg­u­la­tors in the EU are more open to hav­ing “more of a con­ver­sa­tion” about the pro­posed deal, in com­par­i­son to the UK. Also accord­ing to Smith, the EU is a more attrac­tive area to do busi­ness in than the UK.

“Peo­ple are shocked peo­ple are dis­ap­point­ed and peo­ple’s con­fi­dence in tech­nol­o­gy in the UK has been severe­ly shak­en,” Smith said.

The CMA (Com­pe­ti­tion & Mar­kets Author­i­ty) hand­ed down its deci­sion on April 26th, announc­ing it would be block­ing the deal over con­cerns about cloud gam­ing. Since then, Microsoft and Activi­sion Bliz­zard have lawyered up with major names, includ­ing a lawyer who pre­vi­ous­ly rep­re­sent­ed Queen Eliz­a­beth II.

Microsoft­’s buy­out of Activi­sion Bliz­zard has already been approved in sev­er­al coun­tries, includ­ing Japan, Sau­di Ara­bia, and Ser­bia. New Zealand’s Com­merce Com­mis­sion is look­ing at mak­ing a deci­sion on June 9th. The FTC is the US is set to host its first evi­den­tiary hear­ing on August 2nd.