The $19.7 billion acquisition of speech-to-text specialist Nuance by Microsoft, announced earlier this year, has attracted the attention of the U.K.’s active antitrust watchdog — which said today it’s taking a first look to assess whether there are reasons to be concerned about the proposed deal.
A decision on whether the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will open a phase 1 investigation will follow in due course.
Currently, there’s no stated time frame for the regulator to take a decision on that — but a consultation period in which the CMA is inviting interested parties to comment runs until January 10, 2022.
Antitrust oversight of proposed acquisitions can stretch to many months — and can, at the least, lead to major delays to clearing transactions.
In a statement on the development, the CMA said it is “considering whether it is or may be the case that this tra …
