Consultation outcome

Updates to the CMA’s Merger Assessment Guidelines (CMA129)

This consultation has concluded

Read the full outcome

Summary of responses to the consultation

Detail of outcome

The CMA has published its updated merger assessment guidelines. These guidelines have been revised in order to bring them up to date with current best practice. The CMA’s previous guidelines were published in 2010, and since then, markets have evolved and changed at a rapid pace. Building on recommendations made by the Furman and Lear reports in 2019 on how the CMA should approach its assessment of digital mergers, the updated guidelines reflect the legal framework within which the CMA undertakes merger assessments and have been updated to take account of the CMA’s recent experience and case law.

Feedback received

ABA Antitrust Law Section

Alexander Baker

Baker McKenzie LLP

City of London Law Society (CLLS)

Clifford Chance LLP

Compass Lexecon

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP

Frontier Economics

Hugh Mullan

KPMG Economics

Lawrence B Landman

Matthew Bennet and Simon Chisholm

RBB Economics

Slaughter and May

The Law Society

Detail of feedback received

The CMA received 23 responses to the consultation.


Original consultation

Summary

The CMA is consulting on proposed updates to its published guidance relating to the substantive approach of the CMA to its analysis when investigating mergers.

This consultation ran from
to

Consultation description

We are consulting on updates to the CMA’s Merger Assessment Guidelines, which set out the substantive approach of the CMA to its analysis when investigating mergers. The updated guidelines will help companies and their advisers in assessing whether competition law concerns might be raised by a merger.

These guidelines have been revised in order to bring them up to date with current best practice. The CMA’s current guidelines were published in 2010, and since then, markets have evolved and changed at a rapid pace. Building on recommendations made by the Furman and Lear reports in 2019 on how the CMA should approach its assessment of digital mergers, the updated guidelines reflect the legal framework within which the CMA undertakes merger assessments and have been updated to take account of the CMA’s recent experience and case law.

For more information, see Consultation launched on CMA merger assessment guidelines.

Documents

Updates to this page

Published 17 November 2020
Last updated 18 March 2021 + show all updates
  1. Responses to the consultation and a summary of the responses to the consultation published.

  2. First published.

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