Amazon is an American technology company that is known in our country in 2022 for its smart robot vacuum cleaners. Will buy iRobot for $1.4 billion had announced. However, the agreement could not be finalized over the past year and a half.

Today there was an important development regarding the acquisition. Amazon and iRobot signed the agreement is cancelled announced. Amazon to iRobot for cancellation A $94 million termination fee will have to do it.

iRobot will lay off 350 employees

In addition to terminating the agreement, iRobot also announced that it would undergo a restructuring. The company uses all its staff for this purpose They break up with 350 people, which corresponds to 31%k. He is also the CEO and president, one of the founders of the company. Colin Hoek He also leaves his post. Glen Weinstein, who served as vice president, will take over as interim CEO.

As another part of the restructuring, iRobot will also pause some of its products. This also includes equipment other than basic products such as floor cleaning machines. Let’s add that the company will close its small facilities that are not performing adequately and expects a loss of between $265 and $285 million. So things are not going well on iRobot’s side.

Deal canceled due to competition concerns from European Union regulators

In their statements, the companies said:Because approval cannot be obtained from the European Union” and announced the cancellation of the agreement. Amazon and iRobot have had problems with regulators in the EU since the deal was announced.

The European Commission said last November that the deal would “expand” the market for robot vacuum cleaners.restriction of competitionHe explained that he believes he has potential. As is known, iRobot’s competitors sell via Amazon. The EU, on the other hand, thought that after purchasing iRobot, the e-commerce giant could remove rival brands’ vacuum cleaners from its lists and reduce their visibility. He was also concerned that consumers could be offered lower quality products at higher prices.

The EU gave Amazon until January 10 to convince itself. However, the information received shows that the technology giant has not said anything to the regulators to date. does not offer showed. As a result, EU approval was not forthcoming and the agreement was cancelled. It should be noted that the agreement was approved by the United Kingdom in June. However, the lack of EU approval is preventing its completion.

This acquisition is just one of a number of deals recently canceled by regulators. Recently we saw the merger between Adobe and Figma canceled due to similar pressures. Nvidia also left the $40 billion Arm deal in 2022. The merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, which closed in October, hardly succeeded with compromises.