On January 29, local time, Amazon announced that because the acquisition transaction could not be approved by EU regulators, the previously announced plan to acquire the sweeping robot company iRobot for $1.4 billion had been terminated, and it was disappointed that the transaction could not be carried out as expected.
As a result of the failed acquisition, iRobot also embarked on a business and organizational restructuring, starting with a moratorium on the development of units outside of the floor cleaning product line (e.g., air purifiers, lawn mowers) and the closure of smaller, underperforming marketing offices. At the same time, iRobot will lay off about 350 employees, or about 31% of the total workforce. In addition, Colin Angle, chairman and chief executive officer of iRobot, who co-founded iRobot in 1990, will step down from both roles, Glen Weinstein, current executive vice president and legal officer of iRobot, will serve as interim CEO, and Andrew Miller, lead independent director of the board, will serve as chairman of the board.
As part of the announcement on the 29th, iRobot also announced its performance for the fourth quarter of 2023, of which the operating loss was about 26.5 billion to 2$8.5 billion.
In addition, Amazon was required to pay iRobot $94 million as a reverse breakup fee, which was mainly used to help repay the $200 million loan it borrowed last year.
In June 2023, Amazon's acquisition of iRobot was approved by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), but in November of the same year, the European Commission said that the deal was likely to limit competition in the European sweeping machine market, and many of Irobot's competitors sell products on Amazon, and regulators are worried that Amazon may weaken competitors, such as removing competitors or lowering ** Degree.
It is worth mentioning that in recent years, global regulators have become increasingly scrutinized large-scale cross-border acquisition transactions, and the failure of Mason's acquisition of irobot is also one of many failed acquisitions in recent years. For example, in the face of pressure from regulators in the United Kingdom and the European Union, Adobe abandoned its $20 billion acquisition of Figma at the end of last year; Nvidia abandoned its $40 billion acquisition of Arm in early 2022, citing significant regulatory challenges; Microsoft was able to push for the Activision Blizzard acquisition deal by making concessions to the UK and EU authorities.
Editor: Xinzhixun-Lin Zi.