ADBE Adobe Inc

   By Ian Walker 
 

The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority said Friday that Adobe's planned $20 billion acquisition of collaboration-software company Figma could reduce innovation, and has given the company five working days to offer a proposal to address its concerns.

The regulator said that if no proposal is submitted by the deadline it will start an in-depth review into the deal.

The CMA said it has identified concerns into the supply of screen design and provision of creative design software.

"We're worried this deal could stifle innovation and lead to higher costs for companies that rely on Figma and Adobe's digital tools, as they cease to compete to provide customers with new and better products," senior mergers director at the CMA, Sorcha O'Carroll, said.

"Unless Adobe can put forward viable solutions to our concerns in the coming days, we will move to a more in-depth investigation."

Responding, Adobe said Figma's product design is an adjacency to Adobe's core creative products and that it has no meaningful plans to compete in the product design space.

"The combination of Adobe and Figma will deliver significant value to customers by making product design more accessible and efficient, re-imagining creative capabilities on the web and creating new categories of creativity and productivity," Adobe said.

It said the company looks forward to establishing these facts in the next phase of the process and successfully completing the transaction.

Adobe said in September that it planned to buy Figma.

Write to Ian Walker at ian.walker@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 30, 2023 08:00 ET (12:00 GMT)

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