By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Adobe’s $20 billion bid for cloud-based designer platform Figma may reduce competition in global markets for interactive product design tools and also shut out rivals, EU antitrust regulators said on Monday.
The European Commission said it opened a full-scale investigation into the deal after a preliminary review triggered concerns, confirming a Reuters story last month.
Tech deals have recently drawn sharp antitrust regulatory scrutiny amid fears that some bigger companies may be acquiring rival start-ups to shut them down.
Figma’s web-based collaborative platform for designs and brainstorming is popular among tech firms, including Zoom Video Communications, Airbnb and Coinbase.
The deal would remove an important rival and may allow Photoshop maker Adobe to restrict competition in the global markets for the supply of interactive product design tools, the EU antitrust watchdog said.
It said the acquisition may also prevent Figma’s potential growth into an effective competitor to Adobe’s asset creation tools and may also foreclose rival providers of interactive product design tools by bundling Figma with Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite.
“With our in-depth investigation we aim to ensure that users continue to have access to a wide pool of digital creative tools among which to choose,” European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.
The EU competition enforcer said it would decide by Dec. 14 whether to clear or block the deal.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
