Whenever a big company like Microsoft moves to buy another company, it draws the attention of the US Federal Trade Commission, which critically reviews the deals in the interest of antitrust law.
When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was asked in an interview with the Financial Times if he had concerns that the deal could be blocked by the FTC, he expressed confidence that the company would have no problem closing the deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.
According to Nadella, the deal will make Microsoft the third-largest company in the video game industry, behind Sony and Tencent.
Immediately after the deal was announced in mid-January, conversations on business news network CNBC included conversations about whether the deal would be problematic from an antitrust or monopolistic standpoint, and the general consensus of speaking minds was that the deal would not.
Key figures in the network such as David Faber and Jim Cramer noted that the company has not been viewed that way in the past few years, although it has been more critically reviewed from Microsoft's antitrust perspective in the past.
Following the announcement of the deal, Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer took to CNBC to discuss numerous issues related to the acquisition.
Microsoft won't have to worry about the FTC preventing its deals from happening, as much larger companies like Facebook's parent company Meta and Google's parent company Alphabet are seen as bigger threats from a monopolistic perspective.