The U.K. government approved plans for a separate regulatory program for companies including Facebook Inc. and Google, saying the new competition unit would be given powers to impose fines to rein in the dominance of the largest tech companies.
The Digital Markets Unit will be housed inside the antitrust regulator from April, with powers to enforce a new code of conduct and potentially “suspend, block and reverse decisions of tech giants,” the U.K government said Friday.
The move comes after the Competition and Markets Authority called for additional powers to scrutinize transactions for any tech company designated as having strategic-market status under a “special parallel regime.” The CMA will emerge from the shadow of the European Commission, the region’s main antitrust watchdog, when the U.K. leaves the EU’s internal market at the end of the year.