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The UK Competition and Markets Authority did not block any deals last year after the agency came under government pressure to be more business-friendly.
The CMA reviewed and cleared 36 mergers in 2025, blocking no deals for the first time since 2017, according to data compiled by US law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and shared with the FT.
The antitrust agency stopped one deal in 2024 and has previously prevented as many as four deals in a year, according to the report.
The lack of prohibitions comes after the UK government decided to oust former chair, Marcus Bokkerink, in January 2025, over concerns the regulator was hampering its pro-growth agenda. Bokkerink was replaced on an interim basis by former Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr, who is still in post.
In February, shortly after Bokkerink’s departure, the CMA cleared the $570mn purchase by American Express Global Business Travel of rival CWT in an unusual reversal of an earlier decision.
The CMA, which investigates where there is a risk a transaction could reduce competition, has sought to appease the government over the past year by simplifying its merger review process and stepping back from looking at global deals where the UK is less relevant.
The number of interventions — when the CMA demands changes for a deal to proceed — was also lower last year. Six deals were cleared subject to conditions, compared with 7 in 2024, when 33 mergers were concluded, and 12 in 2023, when 36 were reviewed.
“The UK government’s shift towards a pro‑growth agenda had an immediate and unmistakable influence on the CMA’s merger control work in 2025,” said Antonio Bavasso, head of European antitrust at Simpson Thacher and the lead author of the report.
Bavasso added: “We now have a full year of data to show how the government’s pressure on the CMA has played out and the data really confirms what we knew was going to happen — that a correction has taken place.”
In a statement, the CMA said: “This data depends on the number of strategic M&A deals taking place which meet our threshold and whether those deals raise competition concerns.
“Every deal that is capable of being cleared, either unconditionally or with effective remedies, should be. But we will block anti-competitive deals where no effective remedy can be found.”
The government is looking at further overhauling how the CMA reviews mergers in 2026, moving away from the use of independent panels of experts and instead using a committee of the CMA board. A consultation on the change is expected to start in the coming weeks.
A lighter touch UK competition approach comes amid a wider politicisation of antitrust enforcement globally following changes in government and agency leadership.
The Simpson Thacher report also found that the number of merger settlements — deals agreed with conditions rather than litigated — in the US increased significantly last year for the first time since 2021.
Under the current administration of US President Donald Trump, merger interference from antitrust authorities has slowed significantly, with 14 enforcement decisions in 2025 compared with more than 20 annually in recent years, the report found.