Activision Blizzard Inc. stock was up more than 6% in morning trading Friday after the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was narrowing the scope of concerns that it had about the company’s pending acquisition by Microsoft Corp.
The U.K. regulator, which has been reviewing the deal, said in a Friday release that it has “received a significant amount of new evidence in response to its original provisional findings.”
“Having considered the additional evidence provided, we have now provisionally concluded that the merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in console gaming services because the cost to Microsoft of withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation would outweigh any gains from taking such action,” said Martin Coleman, chair of the independent panel of experts that’s reviewing the deal for the CMA
Activision shares
ATVI,
up 6.4% in Friday morning action, were on track for their largest single-day percentage gain since Jan. 18, 2022, when they rose 25.9% on the day of the Microsoft
MSFT,
deal announcement. The stock, which recently changed hands above $84, is on track to close at its highest level since the acquisition was announced. Microsoft’s deal price was $95 a share.
See more: Microsoft bets on the metaverse with $69 billion deal for Activision Blizzard
Shares of Microsoft were off 0.2% in Friday morning trading.
The CMA said the new evidence “provisionally alleviates concerns” over gaming consoles in the U.K but doesn’t impact the authority’s prior concerns about the cloud-gaming market.
The investigation is on track to be complete by the end of April.
