EMEA Morning Briefing : Shares Seen Slightly -2-

The Federal Trade Commission Thursday sued Microsoft Corp. to block its planned $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc., taking one of its biggest shots under the Biden administration at halting a merger of technology giants.

The lawsuit sets the stage for a court challenge over the deal as Microsoft agreed as part of negotiations with the "Call of Duty" publisher to defend the acquisition against a government lawsuit.

Google Ad Software Disrupted for Publishers Large and Small

Google's widely used advertising software for publishers suffered an outage of more than 2 1/2 hours Thursday evening that affected numerous publications large and small.

During the outage, publishers who use Google Ad Manager couldn't make their ad inventory available in exchanges for automated buying, according to publishers who use the technology. They also weren't able to load any ads that the publication had sold directly, the publishers said.

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Expected Major Events for Friday

05:30/NED: Oct Manufacturing output

06:00/FIN: Oct Industrial Production

07:00/GER: 3Q Labour cost index

07:00/DEN: Oct Balance of payments (provisional figures)

07:00/DEN: Oct External trade (provisional figures)

07:00/NOR: Nov PPI

07:00/NOR: Nov CPI

08:00/SVK: Oct Foreign trade

08:00/SPN: Oct Industrial Production

08:00/SPN: 3Q Housing Price Index

08:00/SVK: Oct Industrial production

08:00/AUT: Oct Production Index

09:00/BUL: Oct Industrial Production

09:30/UK: Nov Bank of England/Ipsos Inflation Attitudes Survey

10:00/CRO: Oct Foreign Trade

10:00/MLT: Oct Industrial Production Index

10:00/GRE: Nov CPI

10:00/GRE: Oct Industrial Production Index

10:00/LUX: Oct Industrial Production

11:00/POR: Oct International trade statistics

15:59/UKR: 3Q GDP

All times in GMT. Powered by Onclusive and Dow Jones.

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This article is a text version of a Wall Street Journal newsletter published earlier today.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

12-09-22 0016ET