Microsoft’s appeal against CMA Activision Blizzard ruling set for July

Microsoft will appeal the Competition and Markets Authority’s decision to block its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in a court hearing set for July.Last month, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked Microsoft from acquiring Activision Blizzard due to concerns surrounding competition in the cloud gaming space. Microsoft quickly lodged its appeal against the decision last week, saying that the UK regulator made “fundamental errors in its assessment.” Now, the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal hearing for Microsoft’s appeal has been penciled in for July 24. During a preliminary case management conference, Marcus Smith, president of the Competition Appeals Tribunal, announced that Microsoft’s appeal hearing would be set for late July and could run for two weeks (thanks, VGC). “The hearing of the substance of this application will take place in the fortnight commencing July 24, so the weeks commencing the 24th and 31st of July,” Smith said. “I’m not expecting it to take the whole of those ten days, but I would like the parties to err on the side of longer rather than shorter oral submissions. It seems to me that that is an excess that we can afford.”There is a tendency — and it’s very much driven by the Tribunal rather than the parties — to cut submissions to shorter than they perhaps ought to be. I want to do the reverse in this case. I want to have the parties understand that we will want to give them every opportunity to unpack the difficulties of this case in oral submissions and for us to have the time to do that.”Microsoft had originally pushed for a June hearing, but the CMA argued it needed more time to build its case.However, before the final appeal hearing, the Competition Appeal Tribunal has now set a further case management conference for June 12 that will likely confirm the July 24 date.If Microsoft does manage to successfully appeal, the deal will go back to the CMA for further review.



Source link