A flaw in the design… Photoshop maker Adobe announced yesterday that it was scrapping its $20B takeover of rival web-based design platform Figma. The two companies are abandoning the deal after antitrust scrutiny from EU, UK, and US regulators became insurmountable. Critics of the merger drew parallels to Facebook’s 2012 purchase of what could’ve been a future competitor, Instagram, for $1B.
Future planning: Figma holds a larger share of the market for collaborative-design software than Adobe’s XD, and regulators didn’t love the idea of a company buying up its competition.
Copy-paste: On Sunday, biotech company Illumina canned its merger with cancer-test maker Grail after courts held up an FTC ruling. Earlier this month, Cigna was said to have abandoned its attempt to buy Humana in the face of potential regulator ire.
Deal or no deal… Yesterday wasn’t all losses for M&A. $40B+ in deals were announced on the year’s final Merger Monday, including a $14B takeover of US Steel by Nippon Steel. That’s a turnaround from what’s been a largely muted year. Before yesterday, US mergers were down 16% as the Biden admin’s antitrust efforts made for choppy waters. Regulators stalled out JetBlue’s $3.8B deal to buy Spirit Airlines, while other major takeovers like Kroger’s $25B bid for Albertsons and Microsoft’s $69B Activision Blizzard deal continue to tread water.
More cars on the road could mean more tickets… and the merger cops have been busy. The FTC and DOJ filed a record 50 actions to fix or block mergers in their most recent fiscal year. But last year’s 3.2K deals were also a near record — hitting the second-highest # in nearly half a century. Now antitrust is clarifying its rules: the final version of the Biden admin’s new merger guidelines, which lay the groundwork for tougher crackdowns on tech deals, was released yesterday.