UK Authority Taking Second Look At Sports Fashion Merger

By Christopher Cole
Law360 is providing free access to its coronavirus coverage to make sure all members of the legal community have accurate information in this time of uncertainty and change. Use the form below to sign up for any of our weekly newsletters. Signing up for any of our section newsletters will opt you in to the weekly Coronavirus briefing.

Sign up for our Appellate newsletter

You must correct or enter the following before you can sign up:

Select more newsletters to receive for free [+] Show less [-]

Thank You!



Law360 (March 31, 2021, 7:54 PM EDT) -- Britain's competition watchdog announced Wednesday it will reevaluate JD Sports' £90 million ($124 million) merger with a rival fashion retailer after an appellate body struck down its attempts to reverse the deal.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority published an outline for how it will conduct a remittal of the merger case, in which the CMA is scrutinizing the already completed deal between JD Sports and Footasylum. The watchdog made clear that it would examine the impact of COVID-19 on the affected businesses.

CMA's purported failure to assess the pandemic's economic impact was blamed for its loss at the Competition Appeal Tribunal, where JD Sports had successfully challenged the authority's move to kill the merger.

"The CMA is now inviting written submissions on the matters that fall within the scope of the remittal, including in particular on the impact of COVID-19 on the merging parties, their competitors and the markets in which they operate more generally," the authority said Wednesday.

The authority's reconsideration of the deal comes after the Court of Appeal decided not to grant a review of the Competition Appeal Tribunal's decision in December against the CMA.

The tribunal reached its judgment in JD Sports' appeal of the decision to unwind the merger on Nov. 13. In that ruling, it pointed to the agency's assessment of the pandemic's impact on Footasylum and suppliers including Nike and Adidas and said enforcers had not gone far enough.

The CMA said Wednesday that comments are due April 16 on the remittal, and that it anticipates issuing a provisional report around July and its final report around September.

A representative for JD Sports could not be immediately reached late Wednesday.

--Additional reporting by Matthew Perlman, Nadia Dreid and Anne Cullen. Editing by Peter Rozovsky.

For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.

Hello! I'm Law360's automated support bot.

How can I help you today?

For example, you can type:
  • I forgot my password
  • I took a free trial but didn't get a verification email
  • How do I sign up for a newsletter?
Ask a question!