> A bureaucrat will decide if you can exit the way you want to.

It's not up to the bureaucrat but to the courts. The FTC doesn't "approve" or "reject" deals--it can just take legal action to try to stop a deal, but that still gets adjudicated either in a federal court or in an FTC administrative law court to a judge which is appointed independently.

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/merger-review

https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/administrative-law-...

True in the US, not true in the UK or EU.

Fair, I'm not as familiar with the UK/EU regulatory environment

That’s who’s blocking the sale according to Adobe’s press release: https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2023/Adobe-and-Figm...

Depending on specifics, the EU stopping blockbuster acquisitions in the US startup ecosystem feels ripe for abuse.

I can assure you the EU isn't blocking this to prevent US founders from making money

Adding a legal battle with the FTC to the cost of any acquisition can chill and kill otherwise obvious deals, and or sap value out of those that push through.

FWIW, I think there are good reasons to limit tech consolidation, including this one. But anyone should realize that it will reshape the industry in unpredictable ways, including some that harm "real" consumers and builders.

But anti-trust isn't being invented now. It's always existed. Companies already factor in anti-trust risk when doing M&A—it's just hard to quantify the expected value of that risk

If anything, IMHO, we've been too lenient with anti-trust in Tech in particular over the past 5-10 years. This just dials things back a little, and makes it so that "hard to quantify" risk is a little more likely than it was before, and certainly a little more likely than zero

I don't think Adobe / Figma specifically is an "otherwise obvious deal" precisely because it has such obvious anti-trust risk. The fact that this merger was even announced is all the proof I need that we were being too lenient. Figma can still sell to any number of huge Tech companies

Published guidance is the correct tool. Blocking acquisitions doesn’t really decrease uncertainty.

The guidance already exists. Don't buy your biggest competitor, unless you're but one player in a diversified sector.

Blocking acquisitions creates precedents.

Adobe will be fine; this might wreck its biggest competitor.

What’s net new about this? It has been the case for decades that if you try to sell to the only major competitor that it could be blocked under antitrust.

Or, and this is a crazy idea I know, maybe start a company with the notion that it will be a profitable, long-term success instead of a lottery ticket

A bureaucrat also decides the amount of lead you can put in your product and sell.

In fact, there are all kinds of things you can't arbitrarily do because it hurts consumers, both physically and financially. This includes strengthening industry monopolies which has time and time again demonstrated that it causes incredible harm to entire segments of society.

> This includes strengthening industry monopolies which has time and time again demonstrated that it causes incredible harm to entire segments of society

I don't think you can take a hypothetical worst case and make it apply here. You could also say that we shouldn't have governments, because look at WW2 and all the war they declared.

Adobe buying Figma wouldn't cause incredible harm to entire segments of society. It's barely even a monopoly, in that Adobe doesn't really do what Figma does already, and there is incredible potential in just making another Figma competitor if Adobe ruins Figma.

I’m pretty sure no VCs are kicking themselves for having invested in Figma.