The CMA is consulting on updated guidelines about its approach to analysing mergers.
The updated Merger Assessment Guidelines will help ensure that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) continues to protect consumers through its merger enforcement work as well as aiding companies and their advisers to assess whether competition concerns might be raised by the CMA before they enter into a deal or purchase.
The CMA’s current merger assessment guidelines were published in 2010. Since then, markets have evolved and changed at a rapid pace, often making the act of assessing mergers more complex. The rise of digital technologies has also significantly changed the way that consumers behave and how businesses compete with one another.
Andrea Coscelli, Chief Executive Officer of the Competition and Markets Authority, said “Our updated guidelines better reflect the way businesses, including online businesses, now compete as well as our own recent experiences of reviewing mergers in digital markets. New technologies have made markets even more dynamic and so we have had to re-think the way that we interrogate mergers in those sectors over the past ten years.”
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