Tech bucks the trend of the recent antitrust hibernation – and now spring has sprung

Global competition investigations into tech giants have proliferated across the globe, and M&A in the tech industry is being given a particularly hard time. As previously reported, Europe alone saw 6 new antitrust cases opened in the tech sector in 2020. In 2022 as global antitrust authorities ramp up their enforcement efforts generally, the impact is a doubling down in the focus on tech.

Bucking the general enforcement trends

But while enforcement against Big Tech seems to be increasing exponentially, a recent OECD report actually found that on the whole antitrust enforcement dropped significantly between 2015 and 2020. Our recent blog post sets out in detail how market studies, cartel investigations and decisions decreased, while in parallel, fines grew to jaw-dropping levels, record numbers of abuse of dominance investigations were launched, and dawn raids fluctuated throughout that period (before obviously falling off a cliff during the pandemic).

Reasons for this include detection tools such as leniency applications and tip-offs from whistle-blowers having dried up, partly perhaps in response to the rise in private damages cases. At the same time, global regulators have been hampered by lockdowns and swamped with the record numbers of merger decisions taken by global regulators between 2015 and 2020. 

Competition authorities have been ramping up their annual budgets, headcount and capabilities and, on the enforcement, side have been focussing on fewer, more big-hitting cases – a trend that can certainly be felt by tech giants.

Tech to be hit even harder

However the tide has changed: the wave of dawn raids we were promised in the autumn has started to sweep across Europe. And while lockdowns prevented in-person inspections, authorities were busy upskilling on their own tech to better detect anticompetitive behaviour – ironic? 

They’ve also been busy joining up across borders and continents. Very recently, the US, UK, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand watchdogs formed a “Five Eyes” working group over suspected supply chain collusion. 

Closer to home, the European Commission and UK CMA coordinated on dawn raids over the recycling of end-of-life vehicles, after announcing parallel probes into Google and Meta over their adtech practices.

All of this can only mean one thing – antitrust is about to hit tech even harder than before.

What's in store this spring

Read our LinkingCompetition blog post to find out further what trends were identified by the OECD between 2015 and 2020, what’s in store for this spring, and what you can do to maintain the spring in your step.