EU Regulators To Decide On Apple-Beats Deal By End Of July

Back in May, Apple officially announced that they would be acquiring Beats for a whopping $3 billion. The deal is probably one of Apple’s largest acquisitions to date and heralds a new direction in which Apple could be headed. While the deal has been officially announced, naturally it has to pass through the regulators before it is official.

It is unclear how the US regulators are treating the deal, but over in Europe, Reuters reports that the EU will be making their decision about the Apple-Beats deal by the 30th of July, and decide if they want to give the deal the green light to go ahead with it. According to Reuters, “The Commission can either clear the deal unconditionally or demand concessions if it sees competition issues. It can also open an extensive investigation if it has deeper concerns.”

It seems unlikely that Apple will run into any trouble with the deal. Usually acquisitions run into roadblocks when regulators deem that the acquisition might give the company a monopoly, like how regulators in the US eventually rejected the idea of AT&T and T-Mobile merging a couple of years ago.

In any case many expect that the deal will be finalized and officially completed during Q3 of 2014, so we guess we’ll just have to keep our eyes peeled for that. In the meantime what do you guys think? Will the Apple-Beats deal run into any trouble?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple
Tags: beats