Amazon announced Thursday that it has completed the acquisition of MGM Studios, in an $8.45 billion deal that will see the e-commerce giant expand its TV and movie offerings.
“We welcome the employees, creators and talent of MGM to Prime Video and Amazon Studios, and we look forward to working together,” said Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Amazon, in a statement. communicated.
The acquisition, which was announced almost a year ago, immediately drew the attention of antitrust authorities to Amazon.
Many news outlets have reported that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering challenging the deal, but a formal investigation has not taken place despite calls from lawmakers to do so.
“This decision comes following Amazon certified to the FTC that it had provided all the information requested by antitrust investigators examining the agreement”, reports the Wall Street Journal, which specifies that this step has “placed the transaction within a regulatory deadline. with the agency which has now expired, leaving the company free to move forward”.
The deal is Amazon’s second-largest deal in history, behind the $13.7 billion takeover of supermarket chain Whole Foods in 2017.
With MGM in the fold, Prime Video will be able to add 4,000 films to its catalog, including the iconic James Bond franchise. MGM also has a rich library of 17,000 episodes of television content, enough to strengthen Prime Video’s positioning once morest the streaming giants Netflix, Apple TV + or HBO Max.
