Hi there, welcome back. It's great to be with you again. This is Emlex's weekly podcast covering the top

regulatory news of the moment. My name is James Panicki. I'm Emlix's Asia-Pacific senior editor.

Now, in just under 10 minutes from now, Laurel Henning will be joining us from Sydney to have a chat

about an incredible civil cartel lawsuit that has been unfolding in an Australian court.

The Blue Scope Steel trial has been action-packed from day one, with secretly recorded tapes,

international meetings and itemized restaurant bills that prompted questions about a witness's sobriety.

Antitrust has never been this dramatic.

First up though, it's time to put on your headset and get your gaming console out because we're

about to delve into Microsoft's play for Activision Blizzard. That's a company that owns games such

as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. So why is this deal problematic? I hear you ask. Well,

in the US, the concerns are vertical, and don't worry,

we'll get into what that means in just a moment. Luckily for us, our US-based M&A reporter,

Curtis Eichelberger, has co-authored a fine piece of analysis about why this deal and its regulatory

review is so significant. And Curtis joins us right now.

So firstly, just run me through what antitrust concerns there are with this deal, Curtis.

Sure. Microsoft develops video games, but they also distribute them on several platforms,

on their Xbox, PC, streaming mobile.

And Activision Blizzard also develops games, some of which are distributed through Microsoft's platforms.

So what we have is a horizontal deal between video game developers and a vertical deal

where a distributor is buying a third party that makes video games.

All right, so it's clearly presenting some complexities.

Now, this is without doubt a very big deal in the sense that it's 68.7 billion US dollars.

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