Recent Developments at the CMA: 2023–24

This article discusses three important pieces of work that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) completed in the last year. First, we discuss the Microsoft / Activision Blizzard merger inquiry. We focus on the theory of harm that led to the CMA’s original prohibition decision: the input foreclosure of rival downstream cloud gaming platforms. We consider some of the challenges that were posed by assessing competition in a nascent market. Second, we summarise some of the findings from the CMA’s initial review into AI Foundation Models (FM). We detail the FM value chain, the economic characteristics of FMs, and the role of vertical integration and strategic partnerships in the FM ecosystem. Third, we describe the CMA’s econometric analysis to estimate diversion ratios between different brands of dishwashers as part of the Arçelik/Whirlpool EMEA merger inquiry. This is an interesting example of an econometric analysis in a competition case because it was the first time in several years that the CMA used a consumer demand model; and the application of the model was novel because it relied on primary data that are collected directly from retailers.