Cisco/Acacia Merger

On January 19, 2021, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) issued a conditional approval of Cisco Systems, Inc. (Cisco) acquisition of Acacia Communications, Inc. (Acacia). Cisco is a manufacturer of networking and telecommunication equipment and software. Acacia designs and manufactures advanced high-speed optical interconnect technologies. The transaction was largely vertical where Acacia’s digital signal processors, photonic integrated circuits, and optical transceiver modules are used in optical transport systems and routers manufactured by Cisco and others.

Dr. Elizabeth Wang submitted two reports to SAMR to address its potential concerns. The first report evaluated whether the proposed transaction would result in harm to competition through vertical input foreclosure utilizing vertical arithmetic analyses. The second report evaluated the possibility of conglomerate effects due to the proposed transaction.

Dr. Wang was supported by Thomas Stemwedel, Dzmitry Asinski, Daniel Stone, and Narsid Golic in Compass Lexecon’s Chicago office and Sophie Yang and Sharon Jiang in Compass Lexecon’s Boston office. The team worked closely with closely Gil Ohana from Cisco, Andrew Foster and Kexin Li from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, and Yao Feng and Shipo Xie from Beijing Sunland Law Firm.