It seems obvious to me that the value of any business deal could be measured in attributed revenue or movement in stock price. On both points, this deal looked like shit.

It could also be valued in its ability to prevent competition from forming and causing margins to fall in the protected area of business. Which happens to be what the regulators are looking to prevent.

This wouldn’t cause a bump in revenue or stock price unless this broke the equilibrium and let the controlling firm take more of the market. If it’s a defensive measure it’s just increased cost to maintain revenue, but that still can be worth it if actual competition is expected to drop margins enough to exceed the cost of the defensive measure