Jul, 2002 : British Authorities Approve Microsoft ASP Purchase

📅 July 5, 2002 - Business solution developer Microsoft Corp. (microsoft.com) said on Thursday that its $1.3 billion offer for the acquisition of Danish business application ASP Navision AS (navision.com) has been approved in the United Kingdom.

According to Microsoft, Patricia Hewitt, the UK secretary of state for trade and industry has decided that the transaction does not need to be referred to the Competition Commission.
The deal, says Microsoft, has now been cleared by all the competition authorities the company applied for approval from. The acquisition of Navision, which provides business applications as a service, will give Microsoft a means to sell such software to small and midsize businesses in Europe.
Analysts say the deal, along with Microsoft's purchase of Great Plains Software for $1.1 billion, demonstrates that the company is moving aggressively into the enterprise resource planning market.
The move brought up competition concerns, though Microsoft insists that it is targeting different types of companies than its partners are. Observers, however, expect those lines to blur as vendors compete for shrinking budgets.