As someone who’s set in rooms with loads of regulators
(1) you can pretty much always compromise with them.
(2) they want to ensure criteria is met & typically not penalties nor want you to leave a market
It’s more accurate to think of regulators as customers. They just have different requirements they need to solve their problem. Rarely are they protecting consumers imo. Usually they’re there protecting government or other powerful interest.
Regardless, we would do something similar to Apple with regulators. “Look it’ll take 18 months to implement X. It’ll also cost $Y. If you push this issue we won’t make a profit and we will exit the market. Are you sure you want us to do that?”
“No no no. We just need this and that safe guard in place.”
“Alright, we can implement the first one in 2 months, that last one will take time, let’s work on a roadmap.”
And that’s how it really functions.