According to comments made by the company’s general counsel to Reuters on Wednesday, Adobe (ADBE.O), the developer of Photoshop, anticipates receiving an antitrust warning from the EU about its bid of $20 billion for the cloud-based designer platform Figma and the company is open to presenting remedies to satisfy regulatory concerns.
The acquisition of Adobe comes at a time when regulatory scrutiny has been ramped up worldwide for mergers and acquisitions involving large technology corporations that increase the market strength of dominant organizations or those involving start-up businesses that are viewed as potential competitors.
“We are expecting a statement of objections from the European Commission,” Dana Rao said in an interview, corroborating a report Reuters published on Tuesday.
“We are willing to explore potential solutions to the problem. “We will do everything in our power to make this transaction a success,” he said.
Rao stated that potential remedies would rely on the paper the European Commission would produce. This document will elaborate on concerns aired in August when the EU competition enforcer began a full-scale inquiry. The charge sheet may include new issues or eliminate some previously raised ones.
“But as I said, until we see the statement of objections and exactly what the concerns are, we will be designing a solution without knowing the problem.”
Rao stated that Adobe does not compete with Figma significantly and that the only product relevant to this subject was Adobe XD, a design tool for web and mobile apps. In the past three years, Adobe XD has incurred a loss of $25 million, and it only has five full-time employees.
