UK competition watchdog to push for tighter controls on US tech giants
The UK’s competition watchdog will push for tougher powers to regulate companies such as Google and Facebook following the UK’s official departure from the EU, and will pursue antitrust investigations against tech giants independently of the bloc.
“The upside [Brexit] is that you take back control — genuinely — of the decisions,” Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) head Andrea Coscelli told the Financial Times.
His comments come as the watchdog seeks a more active role in scrutinising large mergers and to clamp down on anti-competitive behaviour by US tech titans.
The CMA is facing a significantly larger workload post-Brexit, taking control of the larger and more complex merger and competition cases which were previously dealt with by the European Commission.
Coscelli said that countries such as Canada, Australia and Brazil were the UK’s benchmark on the issue of competition regulation, and said the UK was “in a very strong position to lead” global policy.
Sign up to City PM’s Midday Update newsletter, delivered to your inbox every lunchtime
Deals led by US tech giants have come under increased regulatory scrutiny over competition concerns in recent years. Facebook was allowed to buy Instagram for $1bn in 2012, and then Whatsapp for $19bn two years later. Google bought online ad agency Doubleclick in 2007.
The CMA has launched an investigation into Google’s proposed $2.6bn acquisition of data analytics firm Looker, and recently launched a probe into Amazon’s investment in Deliveroo amid concerns it could damage competition in the online food delivery market.
“When we look at the current deals we have a higher degree of scepticism,” Coscelli told the FT.
“The argument that companies were making seven or eight years ago was that it was very difficult to predict how it was going to play out,” he said . “We now realise that there are strong barriers to entry and expansion.”
The CMA is also developing a new digital markets strategy to help address the competition issues raised by tech giants.
In December, the regulator found that Google received over 90 per cent of all revenues earned from UK search advertising in 2018, while Facebook accounted for almost half of all revenues from display advertising.