Comment: meddling competition authorities destabilise UK plc
Good to see the Covid diet working its magic on the ever excitable Competition and Markets Authority.
The agency has adopted an overly aggressive stance of opposing takeovers, particularly in the digital world. This seemed to reach its nadir last summer when it took agin Amazon’s investment in Deliveroo.
Not only was this a market with healthy competition, but Amazon was not even a player.
As with previous deals held up by the CMA, it recently became clear Deliveroo would collapse without Amazon’s funding. Last week, a mere 10 months after sticking its oar in, the CMA waved the deal through. Luckily, Jeff Bezos is a patient man and had stuck around, or the CMA would have killed a popular service for a nation in lockdown.
But Deliveroo wasn’t the CMA’s only takeaway obsession. In January it jammed a stick into the spokes of Just Eat’s takeover by Takeaway.com days before it was to be rung in at the Stock Exchange.
Most Brits had never even heard of Takeaway.com. It pulled a brief effort to crack the UK four years ago. So, how could this hit competition?
Ah, the CMA said, because Takeaway.com might one day try to relaunch its own UK service.
Bemusement all round. Surely any bidder for any company might launch a rival service some unspecified time in the future.
Today, the CMA removed its opposition, “satisfied” Takeaway.com hadn’t been coming back.
It then boasts it’s helping firms through Covid by speeding up its decisions to prevent uncertainty.
Surely it would create far less uncertainty if it just butted out of harmless takeovers altogether.
@ArmitageJim
