In any other country CX looking to buy another airline would be grounds for a competition commission type challenge. But not in HK. I still don't understand how CX is able to have both CX and KA as different carriers, with separate carrier licences. Actually I am able to understand, this is Hong Kong.
I am pissed HK government rejected Qantas/Jetstar applicaton for a HK licence a few years ago just to favour CX monopoly. Jetstar still fly to HK via Jetstar Japan and Jetstar Asia, but HK could have become much more of a hub but HK government told them to fuck off.
Now taking over HKE again gives CX more monopoly powers which sucks. But I can see the business reasons why they are doing it. They deliberately decided against forming their own LCC carrier 5 years ago when everyone else was doing it and now I guess they realise they made a mistake and need to go budget. 6 months ago they revamped their Asia miles to benefit the budget travellers (only 10k miles to fly to Japan, Singapore, etc now). Now they seem to have decided to go all out on budget and easier to just take over HKE than to start their own.