Region: United Kingdom

Lawyers predict that late revisions by the UK’s competition watchdog to its provisional findings in Microsoft/Activision Blizzard will play a key role in the companies' appeal against a merger block that surprised many but was altogether consistent with the agency’s “very strict approach” to behavioural remedies.

26 April 2023

Michael Engel has left Kirkland & Ellis to join White & Case as a partner in London.

26 April 2023

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has prohibited Microsoft’s $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard, warning the deal would harm competition and “the future of the fast-growing cloud gaming market”.

26 April 2023

The UK government has finally introduced a law establishing a new regulatory regime to tackle dominant technology companies and give the country’s competition authority bolstered investigative and enforcement powers.

25 April 2023

Two appellate judges today questioned if the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal was too quick to reject a pair of competing opt-out forex collective actions, while counsel to both proposed class representatives attacked the earlier judgment for being “replete with legal errors”.

25 April 2023

Mary Wilks has joined Proskauer Rose as a partner in London after 18 years at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

25 April 2023

Visa and Mastercard have urged the UK’s specialist competition tribunal to apply domestic statute of limitations rules to interchange fee claimants seeking billions of pounds in damages from the card companies.

25 April 2023

Interchange fee claimants seeking billions of pounds in damages from Visa and Mastercard have urged the UK’s specialist competition tribunal to respect their “accrued EU law rights” and find their claims are not bound by domestic statute of limitations rules.

24 April 2023

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has said proposed behavioural commitments are unlikely to remedy its concerns about Cochlear’s €111 million purchase of Oticon Medical, warning that even the full divestment of the overlapping business might not fix the harm.

20 April 2023

South Africa’s Competition Commission has approved Microsoft’s $67.8 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, following a global assurance from the parties that they will continue to supply the Call of Duty franchise to competitors.

19 April 2023