John Fingleton; and vice president of Charles River Associates and former CMA director of Economics
Matthew Bennett discussed how to navigate the CMA’s approaches in reviewing digital deals, including:
the CMA’s current policy position on tech deals and which transactions catch their attention;
navigating the CMA’s hold separate orders in digital businesses;
building, buying, partnering and countering claims of competition harm;
addressing CMA prospective and dynamic theories of harm; and
addressing complexity in digital remedies beyond the U.K.
Ms. Vandenborre introduced the webinar by recalling that practitioners have seen the CMA take a more interventionist approach, more readily adopting dynamic theories of harm and asserting jurisdiction over mergers in digital markets. This can be framed within wider political shifts as the U.K. gears up for Brexit, with the CMA consulting on updates to its mergers guidance, the government commissioning a further report on the competition regime and, if that were not enough, the government entirely revamping its foreign investment regime with a new mandatory notification system for deals across a swath of U.K. industry sectors.