The proposal of Adobe’s purchase of Figma may be in danger: The European Union has confirmed that it will fully investigate the agreement. Those responsible for monitoring competition in the area have made this decision after a preliminary review that has led them to conclude that if Figma becomes the property of Adobe, competition between product design tools globally could be reduced. . In addition, this purchase could eventually exclude the company’s rivals.
For this reason, according to Reuters, the European Commission has opened a large-scale investigation to find out if its suspicions are true. At present, Figma’s product design and prototyping platform is very popular among many companies from various industries. And your purchase could affect your competition if Adobe decides to restrict competition in the provision of interactive product design tools, such as Figma.
In addition, the purchase may also affect Figma’s growth potential to become an effective competitor to Adobe’s asset creation tools. All of this, combined, would lead to a reduction in competition in interactive product design tools. Especially if, as it seems, Figma would eventually be integrated into Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite.
According to European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestagerwith the investigation the EU intends «ensure that consumers continue to have access to a wide variety of digital creative tools to choose from«.
But from Adobe they do not agree with what they point out from the EU, and assure that they have received overwhelmingly positive feedback on the purchase agreement from their clients around the world. They also highlight that they trust «on the merits of the case, as Figma’s product design is adjacent to Adobe’s core creative products, and Adobe has no consistent plans to compete in the product design space«. In the company they also expectmake these facts clear in the next phase of the process, and complete the transaction successfully«.
This new investigation further postpones the date to find out whether or not Adobe will have significant obstacles to buy Figma. The new deadline for the European Union to decide whether to give the green light to the operation, or if on the contrary to block it, is set at December 14 of this year.
