Adobe's $20B Figma Deal Deadline Extended - What's Going On?

The U.K. extended its probe into Adobe Inc's ADBE $20 billion takeover of Figma Inc, citing more time to look at new submissions from the companies.

The Competition and Markets Authority pushed back the statutory deadline to February 25 from the end of the year. They will publish the provisional findings in late November.

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The global regulators see the takeover as a massive bet that small businesses and everyday users will do more creative work on the web, a market that Figma has rapidly seized, Bloomberg reports. 

While Adobe launched less-expensive, streamlined products for that audience, most of its offerings are still heavyweight programs aimed at specialists.

The deal is also under scrutiny from the EU regulator over concerns of Adobe exploiting its market power to slash the price of Figma's products or bundle them with its own Creative Cloud offering. 

The U.S. Department of Justice is also scrutinizing the deal.

Britain's CMA fears that Adobe's deal may reduce competition in the all-in-one screen design software market and the creative design market.

Several such takeover deals succumbed to regulatory probes, including Nvidia Corp's NVDA takeover of Arm Holdings Plc ARM.

Price Action: ADBE shares traded lower by 2.84% at $524.26 on the last check Wednesday.