Sources: EU regulators plan to file anti-competitive charges against Adobe's $20B Figma deal as early as this week; the duo announced the deal in September 2022
Javier Espinoza / Financial Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
The proposed acquisition had already moved from an initial Commission review into a detailed Phase 2 investigation, and the EU later resumed that review with a February decision deadline. The reported move toward formal charges is therefore an escalation within a process that had been steadily testing the deal’s competitive effects.
The review also followed reports that Adobe had not initially offered remedies despite parallel UK scrutiny. That makes the prospect of charges consequential: it raises the pressure on the companies to defend the transaction’s impact on design-software competition.
First-order effects
- Adobe and Figma face a more adversarial EU merger-review stage if charges are filed, requiring a formal response to the Commission’s competition concerns.
- The $20B transaction’s path to closing becomes more uncertain, while the companies assess whether commitments can resolve the objections.
Second-order effects
- A formal EU case would increase the leverage of UK and US enforcers examining the same combination, making a coordinated remedy strategy more important for Adobe and Figma.
- Design-software customers and rivals gain a clearer signal that regulators are scrutinizing consolidation between established creative-tool providers and fast-growing collaborative design platforms.
Third-order effects
- If authorities sustain objections, large software acquisitions may increasingly need to preserve product independence or divest overlapping tools rather than rely on broad claims of complementary products.
- The case tests whether merger control will treat control of collaborative design workflows as a durable competition issue, not simply a feature expansion for incumbent creative-software suites.
The trend: This is one data point in tougher cross-border antitrust scrutiny of software-platform acquisitions that combine incumbent creative suites with collaborative product-design tools.