Amazon, iRobot deal in question after deadline missed

Amazon's (AMZN) $1.4 billion deal to buy iRobot (IRBT) may be in jeopardy. The tech giant missed a deadline to offer concessions to European regulators, who have concerns the deal could stifle competition in the robot vacuum market. Yahoo Finance Live reports on the latest trending tickers.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Stephanie Mikulich

Video transcript

BRAD SMITH: Amazon's $1.4 billion deal to buy iRobot in May may be in jeopardy. The tech giant missed its deadline to file remedies, which could have aided any issues with antitrust enforcers in the EU. There, you're taking a look at the shares of both Amazon and iRobot.

IRobot would have perhaps the more pronounced move here. But Amazon missing that key deadline here, and especially within the EU, where the EU has had a history of being more strict about enforcing some of the rules with the US big tech companies that have sought to do more business or expand within the region.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, Brad. I think taking a step back, this also is bringing up the question just about future M&A, what exactly that's going to look like more broadly speaking within the tech sector, especially when you have a couple or a handful of names that really control much of the market here in terms of customer, money that's being allocated to their businesses, and their rapid growth rate that we have seen in so many of these companies that are leading the way within this space.

So the fact that we are running into potential regulatory issues here over-- by the EU for Amazon's deal with iRobot just brings up what exactly future acquisitions or future buying plays could potentially look like beyond Amazon and within the sector. But like you said, we have seen Europe time and time again really come out on the forefront with their crackdown on big tech, especially larger tech US companies, being a bit more strict in terms of some of their anti-competitive behavior, what they would classify as their anti-competitive behavior.

So initially, we did see a huge move to the downside here in iRobot stock, and now we're looking at-- it looks like it's actually trading to the upside here in futures, which is an interesting move. But again, lots of questions just about that $1.4 billion bid for iRobot, which now seems to be in jeopardy, given the fact that we are getting these developments out of the EU.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah. The EU, particularly on this-- and the commission had said that Amazon may have the ability to foreclose IRobot's rivals because Amazon's online marketplace is a particularly important channel to sell RVCs in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. And customers in these countries, particularly they rely on Amazon both in terms of product discovery as well as for their final purchasing decision. So that comes back to the competitive nature of the environment that you were just mentioning.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah. And it's also pointing out-- we were just looking at that futures board with the stock rising just about 2%. It is on the heels, though, of that 19% decline that we did see yesterday.