Getty Images scrapped its $3.7 billion merger with Shutterstock following a regulatory hurdle in the United Kingdom.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Getty shared Tuesday that the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority required the sale of Shutterstock’s editorial business before the merger could be cleared. It’s said the board voted unanimously against selling off Shutterstock’s editorial business and instead moved to terminate the merger on July 6 if no other solutions surfaced before then.
Understandably, this update places serious doubt on whether the merger of the two notable visual media companies will actually occur. In fact, Shutterstock shares sank 30% to $9.81 in Tuesday after-hours trading.
The planned merger had already secured clearance from the DOJ back in April, over a year after the deal was first announced.
As we reported in January 2025, Getty Images and Shutterstock planned to merge into one company valued at $3.7 billion in a deal aimed to take on competition from AI. The plan was to rebrand the new premier visual content company into Getty Images Holdings, Inc., with Getty Images CEO Craig Peters meant to lead the combined company.
At the time, Peters touted the merger as “exciting and transformational” for the companies, noting that the deal was set to unlock “multiple opportunities to strengthen our financial foundation and invest in the future — including enhancing our content offerings, expanding event coverage and delivering new technologies to better serve our customers.”
Shutterstock CEO Paul Hennessy had expressed a similar sentiment, praising the deal as a way “to expand our creative content library and enhance our product offering to meet diverse customer needs.”