The UK's competition authority CMA (Competition and Markets Authority of UK), has launched an investigation against Amazon for its investment in Deliveroo, a British online takeaway delivery company.
Amazon’s first takeaway delivery service in Britain, Amazon Restaurants UK failed in 2018. Amazon has also a grocery-delivery partnership in UK with a local supermarket chain and Deliveroo is cooperating with a rival grocery chain.
Amazon’s interest in Deliveroo bursted in May 2019 when it led a $575m (£470m) funding round into Deliveroo which rised CMA’s competition concerns. CMA mandated Amazon to stop this operation because CMA had “reasonable grounds” to believe that Amazon and Deliveroo would merge, even currently they are separate businesses. CMA is considering that if transaction may result in the creation of related merger that could cause a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services.
Decision to proceed or not, with an in-depth probe will be given before Dec 11.