The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is the wildcard in Microsoft’s bid to acquire Activision Blizzard.
Whereas you can make educated guesses on what the US and EU regulators might do, the CMA has made some big and surprising decisions since the UK exited the European Union.
This is because the group now has more powers to look at a broader range of mergers and acquisitions, which would have previously only been seen by the European Commission. As a result, the CMA blocked three deals from taking place over the last year, the highest it’s ever prohibited. This included Facebook/Meta’s acquisition of Giphy. The CMA also blocked the high-profile merger of Sainsbury’s and Asda in 2019, which shows it’s unafraid to get in the way of some of the biggest deals.