Sarah Cardell, the chief executive of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has said she would try to “engage” with US tech giants as the agency investigates UK market practices of firms such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple.

The UK regulator is currently looking into whether these firms are abusing their market dominance in certain sectors. But Cardell has hinted the agency would prefer a “constructive resolution,” and that fining the firms will pretty much be a last resort.

In an interview with The Guardian, she also said the CMA would, from now on, take a more “tailored proportionate approach rather than a default approach” when looking into global financial deals.

Mobile ecosystems

In January, the CMA said it had launched two separate investigations into the mobile ecosystems involving Apple and Google. They are part of the regulator’s strategic market status (SMS) investigations into digital activity in the UK.

In a press release, the regulator said the probes “will assess in parallel these firms’ position in their respective ‘mobile ecosystems’ which include the operating systems, app stores and browsers that operate on mobile devices.”

A few days later, the watchdog published provisional findings of a separate probe which was aimed at assessing competition in the UK’s cloud services market. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft were singled out for holding a market hegemony.

Cardell has insisted the CMA’s preference to engage rather than to fine does not mean businesses will have a free reign, and that the regulator will still fulfil its duty of ensuring fair competition and protecting UK customers.

Criticism and pressure

The UK competition watchdog has been criticised in the past, both at home and by foreign investors, for its handling of certain financial deals involving US tech giants.

For example, in August 2023, it stopped Microsoft from acquiring an interest in Activision Blizzard for 10 years without prior consent from the regulator. That deal, reportedly worth $68.7 billion, eventually went through.

“If you think about Microsoft Activision, I think it’s the kind of case that we would want to think very carefully about. I can’t say definitely would we or wouldn’t we,” Cardell has now told The Guardian.

Such a change of tone, and approach, can be put down to the constant pressure on UK regulators from the current Labour government. It has made it clear it wants regulators to prioritise economic growth and cut red-tape. In January, senior ministers forced the CMA chair Marcus Bokkerink to step down for having ‘a different strategic approach to growth.”

But chief executive Cardell insists she has never faced any pressure from the government, and said the details of Bokkerink leaving his post were between him and the government.

Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds recently said the CMA had taken significant steps towards adopting its pro-growth approach.