Dana Rao, the Head of Legal at Adobe, recently gave an interview to The Verge following Adobe’s announcement of its decision to cancel the acquisition deal with Figma. The reason for this cancellation, according to Rao, was that Adobe faced issues in presenting information to the supervisory agencies of the European Union (EU) in order to prove that the deal would not impact future competition in the EU, which has been a concern from the beginning.
Rao looks at this situation differently. He stated that when it comes to the software market for UI design, Adobe and Figma do not really compete with each other. Even though Adobe has its product, Adobe XD, which is the closest competitor, its user base is significantly smaller, and Adobe has halted the development of new features for a while, so there is no clear overlap. Customers of both Figma and Adobe, as well as other competing software, have also not expressed any concerns regarding this deal.
When asked why Adobe and Figma chose to cancel the deal instead of negotiating or dealing with the supervisory agencies like Microsoft – Activision Blizzard, which took more than a year, Rao explained that both Adobe and Figma believe that the key concern for the supervisory agencies is whether the market will continue to have competition. When the merger deal happens, both companies tried to explain and provide supporting data, but upon careful consideration, it was found that it would not be worth it to continue fighting. Letting things stay the same without any deal seemed more preferable to the supervisory agencies.
TLDR: Dana Rao, the Head of Legal at Adobe, explained in an interview with The Verge that the cancellation of the Figma acquisition deal by Adobe was due to difficulties in providing information to European Union supervisory agencies. Rao emphasized that Adobe and Figma do not directly compete in the UI design software market, and customer concerns have not been raised regarding the deal. The decision to cancel the deal was made after considering the agencies’ focus on market competition and the lack of value in further negotiation.
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