Launched at the start of 2025 by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the regime grants the regulator sweeping powers to enforce “pro-competition interventions” on firms designated as having Strategic Market Status (SMS).
In its initial phase, the CMA is targeting three key areas of digital activity, with investigations focusing on practices such as self-preferencing, restricting data access, and creating barriers that hinder users from switching providers.
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Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said: “The new digital markets competition regime provides a unique opportunity to harness the benefits of investment and innovation from the largest digital firms whilst ensuring a level playing field for the many startups and scaleups across the UK tech sector.
“It will ensure that the multitude of UK businesses and consumers who depend on these large firms for critical products and services benefit from more innovation, more choice and more competitive prices.”
With new powers under the digital markets competition regime, the CMA will be given a statutory time limit of nine months to investigate a company once it’s been awarded an SMS designation.
Consultations on conduct requirements will be conducted in parallel to further enable the swift implementation of remedies.
The CMA is renowned for being thorough in its approach to tech firms, having previously taken extensive time scrutinising major deals including Microsoft’s investments in OpenAI and Vodafone’s long-running merger saga with Three.
The CMA said the nine-month limit ensures that actions and their resulting benefits are felt “as quickly as possible by people and businesses across the UK”.
The result of the new regime could force larger tech firms to end practices that unfairly favour their own services and make it easier for users to switch providers — central themes of the CMA’s ongoing investigation into the cloud computing market.
No specific markets or businesses have been confirmed for the initial investigations with details being made public once each investigation is launched.
“We are committed to ensuring that this regime delivers for the UK – driving benefits for UK consumers and businesses while stimulating investment, innovation and growth across the UK tech sector,” Cardell said. “The regime has been carefully designed to ensure that the UK keeps pace with future developments and maximises its international attractiveness to innovators and investors in these dynamic markets.”
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