The UK Competition and Markets Authority, the CMA, has approved finally the proposed merger between cybersecurity giants Avast and NortonLifeLockan operation worth 8.1 billion dollars: what NortonLifeLock, born as a Symantec spinoff in 2019, will pay for Avast, a year after announcing its purchase.
The decision comes a month after both companies received provisional approval of the purchase operation, and now they have final authorization. The CMA revealed last March that it was going to open an exhaustive investigation of the agreement, since it alleged that the combination of two leading rivals in the market and with such significant ties could raise enough concerns for competition reasons.
In a way, this is partly true, as both companies are among the biggest in the field of cybersecurity, having products ranging from antivirus and protection to VPN tools. And so the CMA apparently believed until last month, when Microsoft entered the equation with its cybersecurity products.
The CMA then began to say that the merger did not, in fact, give rise to competition concerns in the UK. This is because Microsoft has more and more cybersecurity products. Indeed, those from Redmond have been promoting their security offer for some time under the Defender brand, which is aimed at both consumers and companies.
In fact, earlier this summer, they released Microsoft Defender for individuals across all major desktop and mobile platforms. Additionally, it has released a standalone version of Microsoft Defender for Business. And according to the CMA, these products, coupled with the existence of various services from rivals, such as those of the cybersecurity giant McAfee, have made users and companies significantly less dependent on Avast and NortonLifeLock.
For this reason, from the CMA they have approved the purchase operation, since «In recent years, Microsoft has improved its bundled, integrated application so that it now offers as good protection as many of the products offered by specialist vendors. In addition, Microsoft’s recently released applications for its customers bring its cybersecurity offerings closer to those of the merging companies, and this is likely to further strengthen Microsoft as a competitor going forward.«.
From NortonLifeLock they now confirm that the purchase transactionOnce this final hurdle has been overcome, will close on September 12.
