History. 3 of 8: BSkyB / ITV 2007, Lloyds TSB / HBOS 2008, Parker-Hannifin / Meggitt 2022.
Hunch. BT already has about a third of UK broadband customers, and a rival bidder warned on 5 October about less competition in the wholesale market.
The competition market resolves on the CMA report, or a ministerial statement on gov.uk that repeats its finding: YES if the CMA finds a real risk of a substantial loss of competition in at least one market, and NO if it finds none. If neither is public by the end of 15 November the market is void, with BBC News and The Guardian as backup.
We looked for cases where a UK minister took a merger decision away from the competition watchdog on public interest grounds, and the watchdog named a market where both companies worked. We found eight since 2007 among 21 such interventions on gov.uk. Each was a different deal, and two of them involved Sky.