Fair Trade Commission Receives Adobe-Figma Merger Notification

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) announced that it has received a merger notification related to Adobe Inc.'s acquisition of shares in Figma, Inc.

According to the KFTC on the 11th, the acquisition amount Adobe will pay to Figma is approximately 27.8 trillion KRW (about 20 billion USD). Although this transaction does not meet the merger notification requirements under the current Fair Trade Act, due to the significantly high acquisition amount and concerns over potential restrictions on innovation competition, the KFTC requested Adobe to voluntarily file a notification. Consequently, the KFTC received the notification from Adobe on the 26th of last month.

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Adobe is a global software company headquartered in the United States. It supplies software for graphic, photo, and video design creation such as ‘Photoshop’ and ‘Illustrator’, as well as software covering the entire process of planning and producing websites and mobile applications, such as ‘Adobe Experience Design’ (hereinafter ‘XD’). Figma, established in 2012 and also headquartered in the United States, supplies UI/UX software including ‘Figma Design’.

Adobe and Figma each supply UI/UX design software, ‘Adobe XD’ and ‘Figma Design’ respectively, so this merger will result in a horizontal merger in the UI/UX design software market. There will also be a conglomerate merger between Adobe’s design creation software such as ‘Photoshop’ and ‘Illustrator’ and Figma’s ‘Figma Design’. Since this merger is classified as a so-called ‘Killer Acquisition’, competition authorities in the United States, the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom, Japan, and other countries are also conducting thorough reviews.

The KFTC plans to carefully examine, according to the standards and procedures set forth in the Fair Trade Act, whether this merger could hinder innovation such as new product development and functionality improvements in the UI/UX design software market and related markets.

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