The United Kingdom’s new law regulating competition in digital markets gives the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) significant powers to regulate Big Tech “up front” and control companies’ behavior, McGuireWoods London partner Matthew Hall told Compliance Week in a Feb. 4, 2025, story.
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the digital markets and competition parts of which went into effect Jan. 1, lets the CMA intervene earlier to confront anticompetitive behavior by large tech firms. The CMA has set an early tone by launching investigations into several Big Tech companies, Compliance Week reported.
“There is significant discretion for the CMA in what it covers and deals with,” said Hall, an antitrust lawyer and member of McGuireWoods’ Government Investigations & White Collar Litigation Department. “Until now it has had to rely on ex-post enforcement for infringements of U.K. competition law or market investigations under the general regime, which means it has been much more restricted in how it can target and direct Big Tech through proactive regulation.”
Hall said he believes the CMA “will actively use its new powers,” which, according to Compliance Week, “include the power to levy fines up to 10 percent of turnover or 300,000 pounds, if higher, for breach of a final infringement notice.”