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I am a robot (NASDAQ:IRBT) up 1.8% That’s at least in part because of reports that U.S. lawmakers are investigating the Federal Trade Commission’s cooperation with EU antitrust regulators in the failed $1.4 billion sale to Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN).
“The FTC’s anticompetitive actions threaten harming the United States’ global position in the personal robots market while ceding market share in personal robots to foreign entities such as China,” Republican Rep. James Comer said in a letter to the FTC asking the FTC to provide federal Document shared by the Trade Commission with the European Commission. Reuters reports Wednesday. “The FTC’s actions signal to U.S. businesses that the FTC will work outside of U.S. antitrust laws by leveraging the EU to achieve its desired outcomes.”
The FTC declined to comment to Reuters, and Amazon and iRobot did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said last month that Amazon’s (AMZN) exit from the iRobot deal was a “very sad story” about how regulation killed a nearly billion-dollar U.S. company.
Jassy said Western regulators “have more trust in the two big Chinese companies” than they do in Amazon (AMZN) to map the inside of a house, even though we have been excellent stewards of customer data in both our retail business and AWS. This can’t be what we want.
Amazon (AMZN) in January abandoned a deal to acquire the maker of the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner after the online retail giant said the deal had no path to approval in Europe. The Federal Trade Commission also reportedly plans to file a lawsuit to block the merger.
iRobot (IRBT) shares have plummeted 68% since Amazon (AMZN) abandoned the deal.
