headwinds

“Delays and Obstacles: Wasoko-MaxAB Merger Challenges Africa’s E-commerce Growth”

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It’s been described as “the largest merger in African e-commerce” by both companies. When the planned merger was first announced, the B2B e-commerce players were active in eight countries. These recent moves suggest the new entity will likely serve fewer than the 450,000 retailers quoted during the merger announcement. As the merger nears completion, the CEOs from both companies will continue as full-time executives but function in different roles. “Regarding our merger with MaxAB, it is important to state that this is progressing as expected and in accordance with the initial terms.

European Regulatory Obstacles Result in Abandonment of Adobe and Figma’s $20B Merger Deal

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Adobe’s $20 billion mega-bid to buy rival Figma is now officially dead, after the companies said today that regulatory pushback in Europe had caused them to put an end to the acquisition plans. First announced in September last year, the deal was always going to attract regulatory scrutiny due to the size of the transaction and the fact that it took one of Adobe’s major rivals out of the picture. Irrespective of that outcome, the two companies were already facing significant headwinds in Europe. As a result of all this, Adobe will now have to pay Figma a termination fee of $1 billion, which was contractually payable in the event of the transaction failing to attain regulatory clearance — or if it failed to close within 18 months of the acquisition’s announcement last September. That 18-month stipulation hadn’t yet been reached, and no regulatory body had actually announced their final findings — but Adobe and Figma clearly saw no way through this, and with the DoJ also weighing up regulatory action, in the end it just made more sense to pull the plug on the deal entirely.