DealLawyers.com Blog

After challenging years of post-Brexit CMA merger reviews, this Fried Frank article points to some promising trends for merger reviews in the UK in the last few months.

With a renewed political focus on positioning the UK as “open for business,” the government has signalled an appetite to recalibrate the CMA’s approach. The abrupt dismissal of the CMA’s Chair in January 2025 and the appointment of Doug Gurr — a former Amazon executive — in his place, underscores a desire for more business-friendly leadership. In March 2025, the CMA announced several initiatives aimed at restoring confidence in the merger regime: a new “Mergers Charter” signalling a more pragmatic and efficient approach to reviews; a consultation on its remedies policy; and a commitment by the CMA to clarify its jurisdictional scope.

This “Mergers Charter” sets forth four principles and expectations regarding how the CMA will engage during merger reviews — and those include improving the pace and predictability.

Pace – faster pre-notification and straightforward Phase 1 reviews: the CMA will aim to conduct reviews as quickly and efficiently as possible and streamline reviews to focus on areas of concern. To this end, the CMA indicated[11] that it was looking to introduce a new ‘key performance indicator’ that will aim to complete the pre-notification phase of a merger review within 40 working days (rather than the current average of 65 working days) and straightforward Phase 1 cases to 25 working days (from the current 35 working days target).

Predictability – revisiting jurisdictional thresholds and better engagement with merging parties during review procedure: the CMA will look to improve the predictability of the merger control regime by clarifying the scope of its jurisdiction—specifically, the circumstances under which it considers transactions in scope for review. To that end, the CMA will launch a consultation seeking feedback on improving transparency on the (currently vague) jurisdictional thresholds (described below). Separately, the CMA will invite increased direct engagement between investors and the CMA in merger procedures (as opposed to current channelling through advisors) to streamline communication and accelerate the review process.

It also says that the CMA will look to use its powers to clear deals with remedies, rather than prohibit them. The alert also notes that, “the CMA’s intention to align with remedies agreed in other jurisdictions reflects a forward-thinking and coordinated approach to global mergers, ensuring that parties are not unduly burdened by conflicting international regulatory requirements,” with the overall goal to make “the remedies process more business friendly.”

– Meredith Ervine