Like the duck-billed egg-laying mammal the platypus (ornithorhynchus paradoxus), the UK’s merger control regime confounds neat classification. A “voluntary” regime for sellers – that isn’t voluntary for buyers; and a “non-suspensory” regime that allows deals to complete before clearance, but imposes hold separate orders that make other regimes' gun-jumping rules look tame. As regimen paradoxum it is the rare monotreme among the world’s mammals of merger control. A successful encounter in the wild requires careful planning and a healthy respect for its habitat and way of life.

Platypus is our digital platform for UK merger control analysis:

• The stats modules, updated fortnightly, focus on Phase 2 and Phase 1 outcomes, showing data from 1 January 2019 (and comparative stats starting from 2022), and, on the procedural side, a league table of fines imposed in merger cases since the first case in mid-2018.
• We also publish analysis on UK merger control, following the themes du jour, including UK/EU divergence, UK merger control process, and the CMA's approach to assessment of both competition issues and remedies that could solve them.

Platypus’ sister platform Rhino offers the same for EU merger control (and UK v. EU Deal Mortality stats are available here).

Phase 2 Outcomes

Period 1 Jan 2022 to 31 May 2024

Deal mortality and remedies endgames in UK Phase 2 (set of 25 cases – substantive outcomes including PFs): 

• 44% result in deal mortality (comprising prohibition, unwind, and deal abandonment upon referral or during Phase 2); this compares to 30% for the period from CMA formation to end 2017;
• 68% result in "intervention" in the sense of deal mortality or imposition of remedies, with 32% unconditionally cleared; this 68:32 split compares to a 56:44 split for the period from CMA formation to end 2017, which was consistent with the perceived Competition Commission (CC) long-run rate of approximately 50:50 from the introduction of the Enterprise Act to CMA formation (from mid-2003 to end March 2014).

Completed deals and non-notified deals going to Phase 2 (set of 30 cases – all Phase 2 cases):

• 33% of cases sent to Phase 2 are completed deals, i.e. subject to hold-separate orders (IEOs) etc. and risk of substantive intervention (5 deal unwinds in the period);
• 43% of cases were own-initiative cases “called in” by CMA Mergers Intelligence rather than being proactively notified.

Parallel Review:

• Following the UK's departure from the EU, the one-stop-shop principle (whereby cases notified to the European Commission need not be notified to individual EU Member States) ceased to apply to the UK, creating the possibility of parallel EU/UK review.
• 40% of Phase 2 cases have been/are being reviewed in parallel by the European Commission and the CMA (12 total).

Statistical definitions and more detail on our core stats modules can be found here: