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On 11 June 2018, the Government made changes to the UK’s merger regime to recognise the growing importance of small British businesses in developing cutting edge technology products with national security applications. The government amended the threshold tests for businesses in the military, dual-use, computing hardware and quantum technology sectors to allow Ministers to intervene on certain grounds when the target business’s UK turnover is more than £1 million, down from £70 million threshold under the general merger clearance rules. They also removed the requirement that a merger or takeover in these sectors lead to an increase in the parties’ combined share of supply of relevant goods or services before the government is able to intervene.

The CMA has published guidance on the new rules at : https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mergers-jurisdictional-thresholds-from-june-2018.