UK’s competition watchdog aims for leading global role
Sarah Cardell’s CV carries all the hallmarks of a career honed in the UK: an Oxford university education; partnership at a magic circle law firm; and senior roles at British regulatory authorities.
But the chief executive of the Competition and Markets Authority now presides over an organisation with global ambitions. And big tech knows it.
In a speech last year Cardell, 49, said the CMA had taken on a “more significant global role” after Brexit. Tech has been caught in the grasp of its expanded reach, as shown by its ruling last month blocking Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Call of Duty developer Activision Blizzard. This week it launched an inquiry into Adobe’s $20bn purchase of online design platform Sigma.
On Thursday, it turned its attention to the field of artificial intelligence, marking the card of companies racing to develop AI applications by announcing a review of the sector. Under Cardell, who was general counsel at the CMA for nearly nine years before her promotion and worked at the energy regulator Ofgem before that, the UK is positioning itself alongside Brussels and Washington as a third pillar in the policing of technology multinationals.
“The CMA has deliberately chosen the tech cases it has pursued so far because it wants to, following Brexit, be seen as one of the leading regulators on a global scale,” says Verity Egerton-Doyle, UK co-head of technology at law firm Linklaters.
Last year the CMA confirmed a 2021 ruling ordering Facebook’s parent company to unwind the $400m acquisition of search engine Giphy, while current investigations include looking at Apple’s app store and the use of data in online advertising by Facebook and Instagram’s parent, Meta.
Its powers are also due to be enhanced considerably
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