The U.K.'s active antitrust watchdog said today that it is taking a first look at the proposed acquisition by Microsoft.
The Competition and Markets Authority will make a decision on whether to open a phase 1 investigation.
There is no stated time frame for the regulator to make a decision, but a consultation period in which the CMA is inviting interested parties to comment runs until January 10, 2022.
Major delays to clearing transactions can occur because of antitrust oversight of proposed acquisitions.
Microsoft is acquiring a company.
The merger provisions of the enterprise act 2002 may be involved in the creation of a relevant merger situation if this transaction is carried into effect.
The software giant said it was buying the speech-to-text firm in order to strengthen its presence in the healthcare vertical, where it has developed a number of clinician-support products.
The planned acquisition may be subject to further scrutiny by the U.K. antitrust regulator. It may open a deeper phase 2 probe if it decides there is still reason to be concerned.
During one of the stages of the process, it may decide that there are no competition issues to worry about.
If it has concerns, it could decide remedies before it can go ahead or even block the transition.
Microsoft has been contacted for comment on the investigation.
Concerns have been raised about the ambitions of tech giants in healthcare, with the likes of Amazon, Apple, Apple, Microsoft and even Facebook all taking an interest in building tools for tracking, monitoring or otherwise supporting health.
The U.K. is in the process of retooling domestic competition law to take account of platform power, and will be bringing in a pro-competition regime which it wants to protect smaller innovators from the market muscle of tech giants.
The competition watchdog continues to scrutinize M&A activity and other major moves as legislation prepares to empower a new Digital Markets Unit to oversee big tech.
The CMA is at the forefront of challenging platform power and ambition, which is why it ordered Meta to reverse its acquisition of Giphy, a notable development in competition oversight given how few big tech M&As have been challenged, historically.
Limits on big tech will be put on by the UK.
The UK antitrust watchdog ordered Facebook to sell Giphy.
