Not all is said and done in the lawsuit between the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and Microsoft. Following the painful verdict that blocked the purchase of Activision, Yahoo Finance reports that the Redmond-based company has appointed Daniel Beard KC as its representative in the appeal it will file with the commission shortly. He is, to put it in simple terms, a renowned jurist, specialized in competition and regulation, and with an outstanding track record. Mockton Chambers describe them as:

Daniel Beard is widely regarded as one of the bar’s leading specialists in competition, EU law, regulation and public law. He is recognized as a top-notch advocate. (…) Daniel has won several awards for his work, including Silk of the Year in Competition from Chambers and Partners and EU/Competition Legal 500.

According to Yahoo Finance, Beard has already helped both Apple and Intel to reverse two separate antitrust rulings by the European Commission.

What Microsoft’s appeal consists of

However, we will have to keep our feet on the ground, as the European Commission is one thing and the CMA is another. According to the specialized legal portal inhouselawyer.co.uk:

When appealing the CMA’s substantive decision in a merger case, a standard of judicial review applies, which means that the applicant must show that the CMA acted unreasonably, unlawfully or with procedural impropriety. The CAT (Competition Appeal Tribunal) will not address the merits of the CMA’s decision or conduct a comprehensive review of the evidence presented by the parties. In practice, this means that applicants face a high threshold when seeking to overturn a merger decision, which is reflected in the statistics: the CMA has won 67% of all merger appeals since 2010.

It should be noted that Microsoft is facing a multi-front legal war, which will exceed the deadline set by both Activision and Microsoft to settle the matter (July 18).

The European Commission will issue its ruling in a few days. Its verdict is expected to be positive for Xbox, but the same was said of the CMA, while the FTC in the United States sued Microsoft and this process will start in August. In any case, Microsoft’s appeal process in the UK will take several months and, if successful, the company would have to send the case back to the CMA, to be reviewed by the same people who made the original decision.

Categorized in: