After clearing all regulatory hurdles, Microsoft closes $20B Nuance deal

It was hard for Microsoft to move into healthcare when it announced its intent to buy Nuance Communications. The deal was not a slam dunk in the regulatory environment. The company announced today that the deal has closed after clearing all the regulatory hurdles.

In a video statement, the CEO said that he was looking forward to seeing what the two companies could do together. We will help move key industry workflows to the cloud. He said that they will use the power of artificial intelligence to create personalized customer experiences.

The company intends to use the Nuance technology more broadly than its primary healthcare focus, taking advantage of Microsoft's vast resources to build on the existing solutions and bring them to other sectors like financial services, retail and telecommunications. Time will tell how it all comes together.

It wasn't always a given that we would get to today's announcement with a combined Microsoft-Nuance. Microsoft wasn't going to be dominating any markets with this deal, in a regulatory environment in which governments have been looking more closely at the largest tech companies, and more specifically mega deals that could have a negative impact on competition.

The company was awaiting approval from the British Competition and Markets Authority after the deal was cleared by the US Justice Department.

The deal was approved this week by the CMA, clearing the way for today's announcement. There was no evidence that the merger of the two companies would have an adverse impact on competition in the healthcare transcription market, according to the statement.

The anticipated acquisition by Microsoft of Nuance does not give rise to a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of Competition according to the Competition and Markets Authority.

With that out of the way, Microsoft and Nuance will move forward with one of the biggest acquisitions in the Nadella era, second only to the $26 billion LinkedIn deal in 2016 It is worth noting that the company has a $69 billion deal pending to acquire the company, but that deal is still in the approval process.

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