Adobe’s $20 billion (nearly Rs 16,555 crore) acquisition of cloud-based designer platform Figma could reduce competition in the global market for interactive product design tools and exclude rivals, the European Union’s antitrust watchdog said on Monday.
The European Commission said it had launched a full investigation into the deal after an initial review raised concerns, confirming a Reuters report last month.
Tech deals have recently come under intense antitrust regulatory scrutiny amid concerns that some large companies may buy rival start-ups to shut them down.
Figma’s web-based design and brainstorming collaboration platform is popular with tech companies like Zoom Video Communications, Airbnb and Coinbase.
EU antitrust regulators said the deal would remove a key competitor and could allow Photoshop maker Adobe to limit competition in the global market for the supply of interactive product design tools.
The acquisition could also affect Figma’s potential to grow into an effective competitor to Adobe’s asset creation tools, effectively reducing interactive product design by bundling Figma with Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, the company said. tool competition.
EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement: “Through our in-depth investigation, our aim is to ensure that users continue to be able to choose from a wide range of digital creativity tools.”
Adobe said it has received overwhelmingly positive feedback on the deal from customers around the world.
“We remain confident in the merits of this case, as Figma’s product design is adjacent to Adobe’s core creative products and Adobe has no meaningful plans in the product design area,” the company said in a statement. to compete.”
“We look forward to establishing these facts and successfully closing the transaction at the next stage of the process.”
The European Union’s competition enforcer said it would have until Dec. 14 to decide whether to approve or block the deal.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
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