Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Key definition

CMA definition

What does CMA mean? In practice, CMA refers to the UK’s competition and markets authority, the national competition regulator that investigates mergers, cartels and abuse of dominance and enforces consumer protection law. The body is created and named by statute (Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013) and exercises powers principally under the Competition Act 1998 and the Enterprise Act 2002, now complemented by the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Key functions include UK merger control (Phase 1/Phase 2), market studies and market investigations, antitrust enforcement with administrative fines, acceptance of commitments and remedies, criminal cartel enforcement, director disqualification, and consumer law enforcement....

CAT finds CMA’s phase 2 merger timetable unfair: Sainsbury’s/Asda judicial review on working papers, main party hearings and the need for more flexible statutory deadlines

Published by a LexisNexis Competition expert

Practice notes

CASE HUB ARCHIVED

This archived case hub sets out the position as at the judgment dated 18/01/2019; it is no longer maintained. See further, timeline and commentary

Case facts

Outline

J Sainsbury plc and Asda Group Limited Appealed two decisions about the procedural Timetable for their proposed merger with each other, arising during the CMA’s review. The decisions concerned:

the deadlines by which the parties had to respond to a range of working papers;
the timing set for the parties’ main party hearing.

Parties

J Sainsbury plc (Sainsbury’s) and Asda Group Limited (Asda).
Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

Background

On 12 December 2018, Sainsbury’s and Asda made an application to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) seeking judicial review of the CMA’s timetable and procedure within its investigation into the proposed merger between the parties (see further, J Sainsbury/Asda). On 19 September 2018, the CMA referred the proposed merger to an in-depth phase 2 inquiry, after the parties asked that the referral be ‘fast tracked’ under the CMA’s fast track reference procedure...

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Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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