Big Tech & Mergers: An overview of EU and national case law

Tech companies have been and will continue to be key players in fostering global economic growth. The tech, media and telecommunications sectors recorded [1] a total of 3,389 M&A transactions globally in 2017, worth a total of $498.2 billion. In the US, according to a study [2] from the Department of Commerce, it is estimated that the digital economy grew 3.7 percent in 2016 compared to the overall economy’s growth of 1.7 percent. In the European Union (EU), at EU-28 level, high-tech sectors (high-tech manufacturing and high-tech knowledge-intensive services) accounted for 4 percent [3] of total employment in 2015. For tech-related innovation to drive the economy, both competition policy and sound antitrust enforcement play a crucial role in ensuring that competition exists across