Amazon completes purchase of MGM production company for $6.5 billion

New York, March 17 Amazon has closed the purchase of the film and television production company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), one of the “majors” in the film industry, for $6.5 billion, as the e-commerce giant announced on Thursday. The closing of the financial transaction comes after Amazon confirmed to the Federal Trade Commission that it had submitted all the required documents to antitrust investigators. In total, according to Wall Street Journal sources, Amazon has delivered three million documents over the past eight months as part of the process. Although the Federal Trade Commission's deadline to request more information has already expired, the agency could still challenge the acquisition later if it has a majority of the votes of the five members who are part of it. For its part, the European Commission already approved the transaction last Monday and assured that it “did not cause competition problems”. The purchase of MGM adds 4,000 films to Amazon's portfolio, including the iconic James Bond saga, classics such as “The Wizard of Oz” and hits such as “The Silence of the Innocents” and “Thelma and Louise.” The veteran movie studio, founded in 1924, will be part of Amazon's Prime Video unit and will be overseen by Senior Vice President Mike Hopkins, who highlighted in a statement “the legacy of nearly a century of outstanding entertainment production” from MGM. Amazon is looking to strengthen its Prime Video entertainment platform, which competes with other giants such as Netflix, Disney+, or HBO. This is the second largest acquisition in Amazon history, just below the $13.7 billion purchase by the Whole Foods supermarket chain in 2017. Amazon is under close scrutiny by US authorities, fearing it may violate the country's antitrust laws, given the company's sizeable size and the power it has accumulated in certain sectors. Last week, a US congressional committee asked the Department of Justice to investigate the company founded by Jeff Bezos and some of its senior officials for possible obstruction of its investigations. CHIEF hc/fixed/jrh