Specialist competition law barrister, Matthew O’Regan has recently had an article published in the Competition Law Journal (issue 4/2021) on challenges to decisions of the Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) in merger cases under the Enterprise Act 2002.
Challenges to CMA decisions in merger cases are made to the Competition Appeal Tribunal and are made on judicial review grounds, except for appeals against penalty, which are on a full ‘merits’ basis. In his article, Matthew considers a recent Tribunal judgment concerning the CMA’s jurisdiction to review mergers (Sabre Corporation v CMA [2021] CAT 11) and a Court of Appeal judgment on the CMA’s powers to impose ‘interim enforcement orders’ to prevent the integration of the merging parties’ businesses pending completion of its investigation into a merger (Facebook v CMA [2021] EWCA Civ 701). These are both important issues for merger control practitioners, given the expansive approach that the CMA takes in asserting jurisdiction to review mergers under the ‘share of supply test’, and in making ‘interim enforcement orders’, particularly where the parties complete their merger before obtaining clearance from the CMA.
Matthew’s article is available here. It is a follow-up to an earlier article also published in the Competition Law Journal (issue 4/2020) in which he analysed in detail a number of earlier Tribunal judgments in merger cases, which is available here.
Matthew has a broad-based practice, with extensive experience of all aspects of UK and EU competition law, state aid and subsidy control, and economic regulation. He has considerable experience of advising and representing both merging parties and third parties on merger investigations by the CMA, the European Commission and other authorities, as well as challenges to CMA merger decisions before the Competition Appeal Tribunal. Read more here.
If you would like to instruct Matthew, contact his clerks on: [email protected] or 0117 923 4740.