Microsoft announced the closing of the purchase of Activision Blizzard after receiving approval from the United Kingdom Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which establishes a new scenario in the video game industry, especially in regarding the distribution of popular games such as Call of Duty, Diablo and Overwatch.

With the announcement of the purchase of the video game developer in January 2022, a legal battle began between Microsoft and Sony, since this other company, which manufactures PlayStation, claimed that there was a risk of monopoly in the event that its main competitor (Xbox) was made with Activision Blizzard.

From the first moment, the Japanese manufacturer urged Microsoft to comply with the contractual agreements if the purchase was finally given the green light after a study of the agreement by international regulators. Then, he also pointed out the need for the tech giant to continue ensuring that Activision Blizzard games were cross-platform.

One of Sony’s main concerns was the future of Call of Duty, one of Activision’s most popular war video games, as it feared that with the acquisition Microsoft would make it exclusive for its platform.

The head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, then assured in writing that he intended to “comply with all existing agreements following the acquisition of the Activision Blizzard studio” and that Sony was “an important part” of his industry.

During these months, Microsoft has tried to demonstrate that the purchase of Activision would not harm the video game sector, although some international organizations, such as the European Commission (EC), have tried to prove the opposite.

After the US Justice gave the green light to Microsoft to go ahead with the purchase, in a transaction valued at $69 billion, the EC suggested that it planned to offer Activision Blizzard video games for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members on a regular basis. exclusive.

This, however, was revealed just a few days after Microsoft signed a binding agreement with Sony ensuring that its main concern, Call of Duty, would remain on PlayStation for 10 years.

Although the initial deadline for closing the agreement was July 18, just one day after this announcement, on the 19th of the same month Microsoft and Activision Blizzard agreed to extend the closing of their agreement until October 18.

During this extension, Microsoft hit the key to get the CMA to finally approve the acquisition of Activision with a new financial agreement: it would transfer the cloud gaming rights to Activision Blizzard titles to Ubisoft, a decision that ensured that the rest of the platforms could continue accessing their games.

This is precisely what has caused the United Kingdom regulator to authorize the purchase of Activision by Microsoft this Friday since, with the sale of the transmission rights to the French firm, it is guaranteed that Microsoft cannot have absolute dominance about this market.

K. Tovar

Source: Reuters

(Referential image source: Microsoft, dpa)

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La entrada Microsoft finalized the purchase of Activision Blizzard apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The video game developer and publisher Activision Blizzard closed the second quarter of the year with a net profit of 587 million dollars, which represents an increase of 109 % compared to the same quarter of 2022, according to the income statement published this Wednesday by the company.

Billing between April and June increased by 34.2 %, to stand at 2,207 million dollars, including a 71 % growth in product sales, up to 520 million dollars, while microtransactions within games and subscriptions accounted for revenue of 1,687 million dollars, 25.9 % more.

In this way, in the first six months of the year, the multinational obtained a net profit of 1,328 million dollars, 96.7 % more than in the first half of 2022, while sales totaled 4,590 million dollars, 34.5 % more.

“While we remain concerned about the economy and increasing industry competition, we remain focused on the long-term opportunities ahead and completing our merger with Microsoft,” said Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard.

In this sense, the company has announced an agreement with Microsoft to extend until October 18 the deadline for the closing of its purchase by the Redmond giant in exchange for 69,000 million dollars, which was initially scheduled for July 18.

Source: dpa

(Reference image source: Alexander Cifuentes, Unsplash)

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La entrada Activision Blizzard closed the second quarter with a profit of more than 100 % apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The Federal Trade Commission of the United States (FTC) filed a notice of appeal with the courts, after a federal judge ruled last Tuesday that Microsoft can go ahead with the purchase of the video game giant Activision Blizzard, a transaction valued at 69,000 million dollars.

The petition filed with the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit seeks to reverse the decision of Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of the Northern District of California Court, who found that the FTC had not shown that it is probable that the combined company will surely eliminate ‘Call of Duty’ by Sony PlayStation, or that Activision’s ownership of content will materially harm competition in the cloud gaming and subscription gaming markets.

“The District Court ruling makes it very clear that this acquisition is good for both competition and consumers“, said Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, in a statement collected by ‘CNBC’. “We are disappointed that the FTC is continuing with what has become a demonstrably weak case,” he added.

For its part, Activision defended that “the facts have not changed” and expressed confidence that the United States will remain “among the 39 countries where the merger can be closed“.

The purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft has divided those responsible for Competition in the main economies, since the European Commission authorized the transaction with conditions last May, while the British CMA decided to block the merger.

K. Tovar

Source: CNBC

(Reference image source: Alexander Cifuentes, Unsplash)

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La entrada Microsoft allowed to continue with the purchase of Activision Blizzard apareció primero en Bitfinance.

Visa has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Brazilian ‘fintech’ Pismo, which has operations in the regions of Latin America, Asia Pacific and Europe, for a total amount of 1,000 million dollars (about 914 million euros).

With the acquisition of Pismo, Visa will be positioned to provide central banking and issuer processing capabilities across debit, prepaid, credit and commercial cards for customers through cloud-native technologies. Pismo’s platform will also enable Visa to provide support and connectivity for emerging payment lanes, such as Pix in Brazil, and for financial institution customers.

Pismo will retain its current management team. The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions and is expected to close in late 2023.

Visa’s director of product and strategy, Jack Forestell, has stated that through the acquisition of Pismo, Visa can “better” serve its financial institutions and ‘fintech’ clients, with “more differentiated” banking and issuing solutions.

For his part, the co-founder and CEO of Pismo, Ricardo Josua, explained that Visa provides them with “unmatched” support to expand their presence around the world and help shape a new era for banking and payments.

Source: dpa

(Reference image source: Europa Press, dpa)

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A US federal court has issued a temporary restraining order blocking Microsoft from closing the $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard purchase deal.

The setbacks in the possible acquisition of the developer by the Xbox manufacturer have occurred since the news was released, in January 2022, when Sony suggested that, if this purchase took place, its main competitor could exercise a monopoly in the video game sector.

From then on, various international organizations began to study the case to find out what the real consequences of this purchase could be and its impact on other brands, such as the Japanese one.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is the national consumer protection agency of the United States, filed a lawsuit to block this economic transaction.

This blocking lawsuit will be resolved in a trial scheduled for August 2, but it does not prevent Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, whose contract requires the acquisition to close on July 18, from closing a previous agreement.

To prevent this, this Monday, the FTC asked the US courts to block this agreement between the Xbox manufacturer and the Call Of Duty developer with a temporary restraining order.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, for their part, will have until June 16 to present legal arguments against the injunction, while the FTC will have until June 20 to respond.

Source: dpa

(Reference image source: Glenn Carstens-Peters, Unsplash)

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La entrada US federal court temporarily blocks the purchase of Activison Blizzard apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States is preparing an order to block the purchase agreement of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard before the Administrative Court of the country.

The acquisition of the video game developer was announced in January last year, but after Sony refused, suggesting that this would lead to a monopoly, several international organizations have studied the case to find out what could happen if they finally this purchase occurs.

In December 2022, the FTC filed a lawsuit to block the developer’s purchase of titles like Call of Duty for around $61 billion. This body then argued that this purchase “would allow Microsoft to suppress competitors for its Xbox game consoles and its rapidly growing cloud gaming and subscription content business.”

The director of the FTC’s Office of Competition, Holly Vedova, also said that Microsoft had already demonstrated “that it can withhold content from its gaming rivals” and suggested that it would continue to do so if it were to buy the developer.

“We seek to prevent Microsoft from gaining control of a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple fast-growing and dynamic gaming markets”, Vedova insisted.

Now, the FTC is asking US courts to block the Xbox maker from acquiring Activision Blizzard with a temporary restraining order (TRO), as evidenced by a document seen by The Verge.

K. Tovar

Source: The Verge

(Reference image source: Alexander Cifuentes, Unsplash)

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La entrada The US will block the purchase of Activision by Microsoft apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) has approved Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, as it sees no indication that competition in the video game industry may be affected by this transaction.

Several organizations worldwide studied the impact that this economic movement could have for Xbox’s main competitor, PlayStation, which alleges that a monopoly could be given with the purchase.

One of them has been the Competition and Markets Authority of the United Kingdom (CMA), which a few days ago acknowledged in an update of its preliminary conclusions that it did not consider that this acquisition could substantially affect competition in relation to video games. consoles in the country.

Now it has been the JFTC that declared that, after reviewing this economic agreement between the video game developer and the American manufacturer, it has come to the conclusion “that it is unlikely to result in a substantial restriction of competition in any commercial field in particular”.

According to this organization, “there are competing businesses and games that are distributed in digital format, so it is unlikely that there will be a shortage in supply capacity,” it qualified in a document detailing the results of the review on the integration of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard.

Japan would thus be the fifth market that approves the agreement established between the Microsoft developer and Activision Blizzard, along with Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Chile and Serbia.

Source: dpa

(Reference image source: file)

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La entrada Japan approves Microsoft’s purchase of Activision apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the United States filed a formal lawsuit in order to block the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, an operation valued at 69,000 million dollars, considering that it could harm competition, since the Xbox manufacturer would gain control of video game franchises like Call of Duty or World of Warcraft.

In its lawsuit to prevent the biggest purchase in Microsoft’s history, the US regulator points to the company’s history of acquiring and using valuable game content to suppress competition from rival game consoles.

In this sense, the FTC recalls that after the acquisition of ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda Softworks, the Redmond giant decided to make several of the titles of this video game developer exclusive to Microsoft, despite the guarantees given to the European antitrust authorities.

“Microsoft has already shown that it can and will withhold content from its gaming rivals”, said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s Office of Competition.

“We seek to prevent Microsoft from gaining control of a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple fast-growing and dynamic gaming markets,” she added.

The US regulator underlines that Activision is one of the few video game developers that create and publish high-quality titles for multiple devices, including video game consoles, PCs and mobile devices, with millions of monthly active users around the world.

K. Tovar

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Source: Vandal

La entrada FTC requests block of purchase of Activision apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The Spanish company for the purchase and sale of virtual currencies BitBase is negotiating with Venezuelan authorities the importation and installation of 10 ATMs for cryptocurrencies that could come into operation by the end of this year.

The announcement was made by the company’s representative, Enrique De Los Reyes, who assured that the exchange has held meetings with the officials of the country’s National Superintendence of Cryptoactives (Sunacrip) in order to manage all the permits and other requirements established by the regulatory body.

According to the BitBase representative, the project to launch ATMs for cryptocurrencies was approved, but the signing of the agreement has not been finalized due to the novelty of the process in the country.

“Everything is very new, both the Petro and the use of the Digital Bolívar,” indicated De Los Reyes, who said he had no problem negotiating with the Venezuelan cryptocurrency.

Venezuela, BitBase’s gateway to Latin America

The Spanish exchange company aims to “revolutionize the cryptocurrency industry in Latin America” ​​and has selected Venezuela to start due to the impact that the use of cryptoactives has had in the country.

De los Reyes said: “I have always had my eye on Venezuela, but this year, when we have seen the economic boom, I came to find out what is really happening. And we have seen that our future is here, and as a Venezuelan, we want Venezuela to be the country of entry for BitBase in Latin America”.

The statistics handled by the company indicate that in Venezuela transactions are made in cryptocurrencies in the order of 10 thousand dollars per user.

The representative of BitBase expressed that in Spain some 2,500 euros are traded in operations through crypto ATMs and they estimate that in Venezuela the figure is around “1,000 dollars a day”.

M. Rodríguez

Source: en.beincrypto.com

La entrada BitBase will install ATMs for cryptocurrencies in Venezuela apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The president of Deutsche Bank and the Association of German Banks (BdB), Christian Sewing, stated that he expects a prompt reaction from the European Central Bank (ECB) in the face of the new increase in inflation.

“In the midst of all the uncertainties, there is much to be said in favor of putting an end to the net purchase of bonds soon and giving a first signal in the interest rate,” Sewing said in a video conference at his function as head of the BdB.

It is “a signal that is urgently needed now,” stressed the president of the entity that brings together German banks. Sewing said that the sooner the ECB adopts the countermeasures, the better it will be for the development of the German and European economy.

The main objective of the ECB is to keep prices stable in the medium term in the eurozone within the framework of an inflation rate of two percent. Inflation in the 19 countries that make up the eurozone climbed in March 2022 to a record level of 7.5 percent per year.

Also in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, soaring energy prices pushed the annual inflation rate past the seven percent mark in March to 7.3 percent, the highest level on record. since German reunification in 1990.

Higher rates to combat inflation

“Long-term high inflation rates are a poison for the stability of our economy. And this is not only because high rates of currency depreciation worry businesses and consumers alike,” Sewing said.

“It is also about the fact that the cheap money policy has been accompanied by harmful redistributive effects for years,” said the BdB president.

Sewing said that people with lower incomes are the most affected. Higher inflation rates reduce the purchasing power of consumers because they can then get less for a euro.

The banking executive stated that each month the danger of inflation stabilizing at a high level grows. “That is why I can only warn that we continue with the policy of cheap money and that then these redistribution effects with all their social consequences are intensified,” he warned.

The European Central Bank has kept interest rates at extremely low levels for years. The key interest rate in the eurozone is at a record low of zero percent. Commercial banks currently have to pay 0.5 percent interest when they deposit money with the Central Bank. The Governing Council of the ECB will hold its next monetary policy meeting on April 14.

Source: dpa

La entrada Deutsche Bank expects ECB reaction to inflation apareció primero en Bitfinance.