This article discusses how the CMA has reached a ‘tipping point’ in ‘Big Tech’ merger enforcement, what the Competition Appeals Tribunal could do in Microsoft v Competition and Markets Authority to recentre and refocus the CMA’s work, and why this all matters to digital markets, and beyond.                …

India is the third largest start-up ecosystem in the world with multiple firms operating across different sectors in the country. In 2022, Indian start-ups raised nearly USD 24 billion, more than twice the funds raised in 2020 (USD 10.9 billion) and 2019 (USD 12.8 billion), despite the challenging market conditions. The top five sectors that…

The long-awaited European Court of Justice’s judgment in Towercast confirmed that national competition authorities (and national courts) can apply abuse of dominance rules to mergers that did not trigger EU and national merger control thresholds and were not referred to the European Commission under Article 22 of the EU Merger Regulation. However, uncertainties still remain….

Are big companies necessarily bad? If they are, how can we ensure that companies do not become too big and too bad? How can markets remain free, fair and competitive? Competition law has tried to answer these questions for centuries, with the most recent debates revolving around the alleged anti-competitive conduct of large tech companies….

In its judgement on 17 February 2023, Norway’s Supreme Court quashed the Norwegian Competition Authority’s prohibition of the 2019 acquisition of tech start-up Nettbil by media conglomerate Schibsted. This is the very first merger case heard by the Norwegian courts and represents an important development in Norwegian merger control.   Prohibition of a Below-Threshold Transaction…

In Turkey, a Phase II review takes 228 days on average, almost eight months from the day of merger notification. Although the Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) has prohibited only five proposed transactions during its 25-year tenure, both behavioural (11 cases) and structural remedies (15 cases) were imposed. The TCA conducted merger simulations in four cases,…

When, why, and on what evidence can a competition regulator in one jurisdiction push for divestments in global deals? An increasingly active UK Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) has been making its presence known, not least in technology mergers. This blog post will review core questions from Meta/Giphy relevant to advising on UK merger clearance…

Advocate General Kokott has found [1] that the General Court erred in law in requiring the European Commission to show anti-competitive effects of a merger with “strong probability” and that the scope of its judicial review was overly broad, notably in relation to economic evidence.   Key takeaways This case will give the Court of…

Advocate General Juliane Kokott has proposed that the EU Court of Justice should find that competition authorities have the power to apply Article 102 TFEU to corporate transactions that are not reportable and test under that provision whether the transaction as such constitutes an abuse of a dominant position. However, a competition authority cannot in…

Introduction The substantial rules of the Turkish merger control are taken from the corresponding EU provisions. The amendments to the Turkish Competition Law in 2020 introduced the SIEC test to improve the concentration control regime and harmonize it with the EU rules even further. The amended Merger Communique in 2022 revised the thresholds as a…