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Ryuu96 on 09 December 2022
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EpicRandy said:
Ryuu96 said:

If anyone is interested, here are CMA's stats.

Phase 2 Outcomes

Jan 2019 - Nov 2022

  • 68% 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;
  • 81% result in "intervention" in the sense of deal mortality or imposition of remedies, with 19% unconditionally cleared; this 81:19 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).
  • 6% of Phase 2 cases have been/are being reviewed in parallel by the European Commission and the CMA (3 total).

Phase 2 Stats | Publications | Insights | Linklaters

68% of deals that make it to Phase 2 are killed, only 13% are cleared with remedies, for a total of 81% resulting in "intervention" and only 19% are cleared unconditionally, these are the stats for every deal that makes it to Phase 2 specifically.

Brexit has made them go gloves off, Lol. More than double killing deals and almost impossible to fight against them.

I'm with Hoeg now that I would put this deal at around a 40% chance of passing, CMA is in no shits given mode even at the best of times.

Yeah I saw those stats earlier but found them incomplete as MS is unlikely to abandon the deal and we don't know how much of those 68% is a result of such. A better would need to exclude those. Also I read somewhere that there was 1 successful case of a reversal of a phase 2 decisions ( Sainsbury’s/Asda 2018 don't know much only read diagonally) through an appeal process. So even if the prospect is still grim it's not as CMA just block the deal without making a compelling argument or hope that those involve in the phase 2 and/or appeal process share the same bias as in phase 1.

Added a few more stats.

Of the 13% Cleared With Remedies - 7/53.

  • 6/7 of those Remedies were "Divestment" I.E. Sell off assets.
  • Only 1/7 was a Behavioural Remedy (I.E. CoD for 10 years).

Of the 19% (10/53) Cleared Unconditionally.

  • 6/10 are either British companies merging with each other, or foreign companies acquiring British companies.

Safe to say that CMA has a very slight preference to British corporations (that's expected) but also safe to say that they don't care all that much about behavioural remedies and Microsoft ain't divesting anything.

Sainsbury's/Asda was blocked and as a result abandoned, as of right now, they're still separate companies. I think you may be mixing Asda up with Argos which was a successful acquisition.

Of those from 2018 - 2022.

  • Blocked - 18
  • Blocked Leading to Abandonment - 7
  • Abandoned - 9

(Took me fucking forever, I kept miscounting, Lol).

Honestly...Hats off to Microsoft if they get past CMA.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 09 December 2022