A record design-tool acquisition ended under regulatory review

What both companies stated

Adobe and Figma agreed to merge in September 2022. On 18 December 2023, the two companies announced they had mutually terminated that agreement. Adobe's statement gave a single reason: there was no clear path to receive necessary regulatory approvals from the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority. Adobe's chief executive Shantanu Narayen said the companies strongly disagreed with the regulatory findings but judged it in their respective best interests to move forward independently. The announcement also confirmed Adobe would pay Figma the previously agreed termination fee, an amount the statement itself did not disclose. Both sides floated future collaboration without committing to a specific plan.

What the regulator's own record shows

The UK Competition and Markets Authority's case page lays out a timeline independent of either company's framing: the inquiry opened 3 May 2023, was referred to an in-depth Phase 2 investigation on 13 July 2023, and the CMA issued provisional findings of competition concerns on 28 November 2023. Its notice records that the parties abandoned the transaction on 18 December 2023, before the CMA reached a final decision. That sequence matters: the deal did not fail a final regulatory verdict, it was withdrawn once the direction of a provisional one became clear, alongside the remedies the authority signalled it would likely require.

What a pending acquisition means while it is pending

For fifteen months, Figma operated as a company under an agreed but unclosed acquisition, a state that is neither fully acquired nor simply independent. Customers weighing whether to adopt Figma during that window were betting on which outcome would eventually land, based on statements that, by construction, could not know the regulatory result in advance. The eventual outcome, a walked-away deal with a fee paid rather than a completed sale, is one of at least three plausible endings that were live throughout 2023. A vendor's own announcement, at signing or at termination, is a record of its position and legal obligations, not proof of what would have happened to the product under new ownership, since that ownership never took effect.

Questions to ask before you adopt it

• Is a tool you depend on currently subject to a pending acquisition, and what would either outcome mean for your workflow?
• Does the vendor's public statement address regulatory risk directly, or only the commercial rationale for the deal?
• What did the regulator's own published findings say, independent of either company's press statement?

The clearest fact this record establishes is procedural: an agreement was signed, reviewed, and abandoned before regulators forced a final ruling. It does not establish what Figma's product would look like today under Adobe's ownership, because that version of Figma never came into being.