(ABM FN-Dow Jones) The Netherlands Authority for Consumers & Markets has withdrawn its request to the European Commission to investigate the acquisition of startup Inflection by Microsoft. This was revealed in a message from the regulator on Thursday.
The ACM made this request due to concerns about the consequences of the takeover in the Netherlands, which were related to innovation and choice for consumers and companies in the field of artificial intelligence.
However, a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice in the Illumina-Grail case shows that the European Commission cannot handle requests from Member States that are not competent to investigate the takeover in question, according to ACM.
“This ruling underlines the importance for consumers and companies to be able to assess takeovers that are not subject to a notification requirement with the European Commission or the ACM, but that can lead to negative consequences in the Netherlands,” the watchdog said. The ACM has been advocating this for some time.
“The question is whether Microsoft’s stronger position after the acquisition of Inflection will have negative consequences for consumers and companies in the Netherlands, such as less choice or innovation. That is why we felt that research was necessary,” said ACM chairman Martijn Snoep.
“The ability to investigate the consequences of these types of takeovers and prevent market power is currently lacking. A new authority for the ACM is required for this. This also restores the ability for the ACM to subsequently refer these types of takeovers with consequences throughout Europe to the European Commission.”
In March this year, Microsoft acquired a large part of Inflection’s staff, including two of the three co-founders, and the US company obtained the intellectual property rights for Inflection’s AI model and the chatbot Pi.
The takeover did not have to be reported to the European Commission or the ACM because the turnover thresholds were not met, according to the regulator.
Source: ABM Financial News