June 30 (Reuters) - Britain's competition regulator on Friday said Photoshop owner Adobe Inc's (ADBE.O) $20 billion buyout of cloud-based designer platform Figma may be referred to a deeper investigation as it could "reduce innovation".
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said unless the parties offer acceptable undertakings to address competition concerns, the deal would be referred to a Phase 2 investigation.
CMA had said in May it was looking into the deal, announced in September last year.
"Adobe has no meaningful plans to compete in the product design space," Adobe said in a statement.
"We remain confident in the merits of the case as Figma's product design is an adjacency to Adobe’s core creative products."
Persons:
We're, Sorcha O'Carroll, Adobe, Eva Mathews, Radhika Anilkumar, Chavi Mehta, Janane Venkatraman, Angus MacSwan
Organizations:
Adobe, Markets Authority, CMA, Regulators, Big Tech, Activision, Thomson
Locations:
U.S, Bengaluru