“Microsoft sets record for biggest tech deal ever, topping Dell-EMC merger in 2016”
January 19, 2022
“On Tuesday, Microsoft said it’s buying video game publisher Activision Blizzard for almost $69 billion, a price that would narrowly eclipse the richest U.S. tech deal in history. In 2016, Dell purchased EMC for $67 billion. The JDS-SDL deal comes next, followed by IBM’s $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, which closed in 2019.
Microsoft still has to win approval from Activision’s shareholders and, more importantly, from regulators. Two recent mega-deals in the semiconductor industry — Nvidia’s effort to buy Arm and AMD’s agreement to purchase Xilinx — have both been held up in regulatory review for over a year.
For Microsoft, the purchase price is more than double what the 47-year-old company has ever paid. Its top previous acquisition was LinkedIn in 2016, which cost over $26 billion…”