Decisive Influenc-er: Do we need to think globally when it comes to special merger regimes for Big Tech?

Proposed UK competition reforms include a special merger control regime that is intended to be more lethal to deals involving big tech players. 

This regime, if implemented, will introduce a mandatory notification obligation for these tech players, designated as having Strategic Market Status, and lower the substantive threshold for the CMA to block or otherwise remedy their acquisitions. Firms within scope will, in time, surely include Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (GAFA) and potentially other major players in the tech sector. 

There is broad consensus worldwide around the risks of big tech acquiring smaller competitors (so called killer acquisitions) and therefore reducing competition in fast moving digital markets. Regulators want to avoid missing the boat on the next Facebook/Instagram and the UK's reform proposes to make it (intentionally) easier for the UK to block tech deals than their counterparts at major agencies in the US or EU, regardless of whether the UK is the main nexus for the deal.

These digital players are active in global markets and merger effects, good or bad, will be likely be global.  Against this backdrop, it would make sense for the UK government to garner international support for its new powers. Not least because a unilateral UK backstop on global SMS deals could get politically nasty. 

Read more in our latest Platypus blog post: Decisive Influenc-er? The Proposed UK Backstop to Block the Next ‘Facebook/Instagram’ | Linklaters