Getty Images is walking away from its $3.7 billion merger with Shutterstock after UK regulators refused to approve it without major conditions attached.
The deal, first announced in January 2025, would have combined the two biggest names in stock photography into a single company called Getty Images Holdings, led by current Getty CEO Craig Peters.
The plan was to build a stronger competitor against the growing threat of AI image generators, which can now produce photos on demand for a fraction of the cost of licensing real ones.
The combined company was projected to save between $150 and $200 million within three years by merging operations.
The US Department of Justice cleared the merger in February with no conditions attached, but the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority took a much harder line.
In May, the regulator said it would only approve the deal if Shutterstock sold off its global editorial business, including its celebrity and news photo units, Backgrid and Splash.
The CMA argued that without this sale, UK media outlets would have fewer choices and could end up paying higher prices for images and video.
Getty’s board decided that condition wasn’t worth accepting. In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, the company said its board voted unanimously to scrap the sale process and terminate the merger agreement altogether, unless something changes before July 7.
Given the board’s stance, that effectively means the merger is finished. Getty also said it plans to bring on a financial advisor to look at other strategic options going forward.
This isn’t the first time the CMA has blown up a major deal. In 2021 it forced Meta to give up Giphy, the GIF search engine it had bought, which Shutterstock ended up acquiring in 2023.
The Getty situation shows the same pattern: a deal can clear US antitrust review completely and still collapse because of UK objections.
Interestingly, just days before killing the Shutterstock deal, Getty signed a separate agreement with OpenAI to license its image library for use in ChatGPT search results.
Shutterstock has a similar arrangement with OpenAI. Despite these partnerships, most major media outlets have so far been reluctant to actually use AI-generated images themselves, sticking with licensed real photography instead.
The collapse of this merger also raises questions for other companies watching how the UK handles big deals right now. Paramount is currently trying to close a 111 billion dollar acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, and the UK government has signaled it may get involved there too.
Lisa Nandy, the UK’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said this week that the CMA may be asked to examine whether that deal creates competition problems for British media.
The CMA opened a formal review of the Paramount-Warner deal on June 10 and has until August 7 to report back.
Paramount says it remains confident the deal will close on schedule and sees no issues with UK media competition rules, but the Getty and Shutterstock outcome is a reminder that a deal being approved in the US doesn’t guarantee it survives contact with UK regulators.
