Microsoft has announced the completion of the acquisition of Nuance Communication for over £12 billion ($16 billion).
The announcement follows the duo entering into a definitive agreement in April 2021, and a regulatory investigation from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
In December 2021 the CMA opened an investigation to establish if the deal would “result in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the UK for goods or services”. Following an invitation for comment, a merger inquiry launched in January and a ‘phase 1’ decision was made on 2 March.
The decision notice stated: “The CMA has cleared the anticipated acquisition” and it “has found that the acquisition by Microsoft of Nuance Communications does not give rise to a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition in any market in the UK.”
Microsoft said the deal was a ‘highly complementary acquisition’ hoped to accelerate its ‘industry-specific cloud strategy’, by adding Nuance’s conversational AI and ambient intelligence tools to its portfolio.
Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud + AI Group, Microsoft, said: “Completion of this significant and strategic acquisition brings together Nuance’s conversational AI and ambient intelligence with Microsoft’s secure and trusted industry cloud offerings.
“This powerful combination will help providers offer more affordable, effective and accessible healthcare, and help organisations in every industry create more personalised and meaningful customer experiences.”
Mark Benjamin, CEO of Nuance, added: “Combining the power of Nuance’s deep vertical expertise and proven business outcomes across healthcare, financial services, retail, telecommunications and other industries with Microsoft’s global cloud ecosystems will enable us to accelerate our innovation and deploy our solutions more quickly, more seamlessly and at greater scale to solve our customers’ most pressing challenges.”
In acquisition related news, HTN last week reported on Harris Computer Corporation completing an agreement to acquire Allscripts’ electronic heath record business segment, which includes Allscripts’ Sunrise, Paragon, TouchWorks, Opal and dbMotion tools.
In the Harris-Allscripts £528 million ($700 million) deal, the purchase price consideration consists of a fixed price of £505 million ($670 million) to be paid at closing, plus contingent consideration of up to £28 million ($30 million) based on performance of the business during the two years following transaction closing.
