there United States Chamber of CommerceThe UK’s antitrust watchdog has attacked the Capital Markets Authority over how it handled Microsoft’s assessment of the Activision Blizzard acquisition. The text that Sean Heater, Senior Vice President of International Regulatory Affairs and Antitrust at the US Chamber of Commerce wrote on the latest website, never directly mentioned this case, but is well understood when he wrote: “US companies have a responsibility to comply with the competition regimes in which they operate , but foreign regulators have a responsibility to ensure that they ensure fair and equitable assessments of these companies, in line with international best practices.” Then with reference to two other very hot cases. Heater introduces the text by providing an indirect reference, because it is generic, but related to the recent decision by the English antitrust to start a second phase of the investigation into the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft, motivating it with a document full of errors and biases: “Some recent decisions have called into question In the ability of US companies to obtain a fair assessment from foreign antitrust agencies. Across the Atlantic, agencies in Europe and the UK hid crucial evidence from US defendants. Purely US transactions improper and appear to have cooperated with other regulators to deny US companies justice” .
From here an appeal to Congress and to White House To intervene so that international antitrust bodies express their assessments of US companies fairly and impartially, ensuring that they are treated fairly.
After invoking some rules by which fair and separate judgments could be expressed, Heater directly attacked the CMA (UK Competition and Markets Authority), not referring to the Microsoft case but to a case Half, whose acquisition of GIPHY has been denied. On appeal, it was found that the CMA had expressed its assessment without taking into account critical evidence (the fact that Snap, Meta’s direct competitor in the acquisition, had no problems with the acquisition), but the acquisition still jumped to the final decision of the English body.
Heater even goes so far as to question the power of international antitrust interventions over US companies, should such mistakes be repeated.
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