Tag: DMU
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Platform antitrust/regulation in 2023: Our eleven predictions
Happy New Year to all! The authors of this blog wish you the best for what will be a thrilling year for those interested in platforms. It has never been more exciting to operate in the tech space. To start the new year, we have put our heads together to make eleven predictions about 2023.…
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Full steam ahead for the UK Digital Markets Unit
UK politics has been in a parlous state. Today the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer attempted to stabilize the country’s finances by announcing some eye-watering tax rises and spending cuts in the Autumn Statement. However, of more relevance to readers of this blog, he also made a significant announcement about the legislation required to implement…
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Why it is now clear that the Australian ex ante regime will be much closer to the proposed UK regime than the EU Digital Markets Act
On 11 November 2022, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (“ACCC”) released the fifth interim report for the Digital Platform Services inquiry (the “Interim Report”). This report recommends a range of new measures to address harms from digital platforms to Australian consumers, small businesses and competition. The diagnostic of the ACCC is not different from…
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Big Tech’s financial services activities – and their forthcoming regulatory attention
Apple, Google and Amazon (and to a lesser extent, Meta) have been tentatively expanding into the financial services sector for years now. It has been very interesting to watch their strategies and it seems things are hotting up. Damien and I wrote an article on this topic, which was published in the European Competition Journal…
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The UK’s Digital Markets Unit: we’re not making any progress, but we promise we will “in due course”
In the UK’s slow journey towards its Digital Markets Unit (“DMU”) regime, the Government has published its formal response to last summer’s consultation document (the “Response Document”). We now know that the necessary legislation will not be included in the next session of Parliament, and therefore will not be enacted within the next year, but…
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When Brexit means falling behind: The probable death of the DMU regime
Everything had started well with the excellent Furman report, which emphasized the need to adopt an ex ante regulatory regime that would apply to Big Tech firms in the UK. That report had indeed found that competition rules would not be sufficient to control these firms’ market power. The UK had the lead and was…
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The Interim Report of the CMA’s Market Study on Mobile Ecosystems : A Great Piece of Work
On 14 December 2021, the CMA published the Interim Report of its Market Study on Mobile Ecosystems. This is a massive (445 pages + annexes) piece of work, which is – as always with the CMA – extremely well done. The purpose of this Interim Report is for the CMA to share the content of…
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The UK’s regulatory regime for Big Tech: will the Government dare to make it more effective?
The British Government’s consultation on the design of the new regulatory regime for Big Tech (the “Consultation”) closed on Friday. We gave our initial thoughts on this legislation back in July. This blog post picks out some of the other important issues. For the most part, the Government has followed the advice of the CMA’s…
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Private damages in the new digital regulations – A fine balance to tread
A picture of “astonishing diversity and total underdevelopment”. Thus spoke a 2004 Report that surveyed competition damages actions across the EU at the time. It took ten years from there to adopt the Damages Directive, which finally ensured that anyone who suffered harm caused by a competition infringement can effectively claim full compensation and gave…
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UK Digital Regulation: time to get into the detail
The UK government has published its White Paper on the new regulatory regime for firms with Strategic Market Status (SMS), which is very likely to capture firms such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. The new legislation is therefore now officially government policy. At first glance, it will be a sigh of relief for the…