DMCC Bill In Focus: Part Five

In Part Five of our DMCC Bill in Focus series, we will consider the impact of the Bill on the UK merger control regime.

Since its introduction to Parliament in April 2023, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (the Bill) continues to attract a lot of attention. With the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigating significantly more mergers following Brexit, the merger control reform aspects of the Bill refocus the CMA's efforts in ensuring scrutiny of transactions with the most potential to harm UK competition.

The Bill aims to achieve this refocus through a combination of deregulation of general merger control requirements (to capture fewer benign deals) as well as new regulatory measures which aim to address gaps in current jurisdictional thresholds. The perceived gaps concern potentially problematic mergers between current non-direct competitors operating in different supply chain segments or adjacent markets (vertical and conglomerate