Full Disclosure:
Adobe/Figma: End of a Deal​

By Jaysen Sutton​
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Hi Reader 👋🏽,
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The story:

Adobe and Figma ended its planned merger, resulting in Adobe paying Figma a $1bn termination fee. The $20bn deal was interrupted by regulators in the UK and EU, with officials seeing the deal as a reverse killer acquisition (buying the biggest competitor of a product), and significantly reducing competition in the markets of product design software and particular editing tools.

What you should know for your interviews:

Competition regulators are playing an increasing role in M&A deals, as we saw recently with the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard merger. Adobe/Figma was one of the few big deals going ahead in an otherwise quiet M&A market. With markets expecting interest rates to fall, we should expect more M&A activity and more capital markets work in 2024.

Impact on law firms:

Competition lawyers can pre-empt investigations by reviewing identifying risk factors in an M&A deal, testing arguments to be made before regulators, and identifying acceptable remedies from the client (in this case, the CMA wanted Figma to sell its biggest product, which wasn’t acceptable to the parties). Freshfields and Skadden were among the advisers to Adobe in the proposed acquisition, with Cleary Gottlieb and Slaughter and May advising Figma.

Have any thoughts? I'd love to hear your perspective below!

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