Is Britain really ‘closed for business’?

Is Britain really ‘closed for business’? That, we’re told, is the view of US ‘Big Tech’ as expressed by Activision Blizzard – the company whose most famous product is the violent videogame Call of Duty – in response to the blocking by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of Activision’s proposed $70 billion merger with Microsoft, which would have given the latter a dominant position in the emergent field of ‘cloud-based gaming’. You don’t need to know exactly what that means to be worried that the world’s digital giants take a dim view of the UK as a marketplace and investment destination. But are they right?

Some pundits have used Activision’s scorn as a prompt to recite the UK’s obvious faults. Our corporate taxes are too high, we no longer offer EU access, our tech skills are woeful, our stock exchange offers a poor platform for high-growth companies and Tory ministers are not as keen as they should be to cut red tape. All true.

But in the case of Microsoft-Activision, let’s note that the US Federal Trade Commission has also challenged the deal, that Activision boss Bobby Kotick stands to collect £300 million if it goes through, and most importantly, that Big Tech is always a seeker of monopoly power – witness Amazon’s habitual crushing of competitors – which regulators oppose in the interest of consumers and challengers. ‘Competition is for losers’ (the slogan of the veteran US tech investor Peter Thiel) sums up the long-term strategy of Microsoft and its ilk. The fact that the CMA has teeth and is prepared to use them is a counter-indication that the UK is open, but for fair business rather than corporate bullies.    

The next crisis

The takeover by JP Morgan Chase of First Republic, the collapsed Californian bank, may or may not mean, as Morgan boss Jamie Dimon declared, that ‘this part of the crisis is over’ and ‘the banking system is very stable’.