{"id":628087,"date":"2026-06-08T20:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T20:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/628087\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T20:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T20:28:09","slug":"uk-watchdog-probes-ebays-deal-to-buy-depop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/628087\/","title":{"rendered":"UK Watchdog Probes eBay\u2019s Deal to Buy Depop"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The United Kingdom antitrust watchdog has launched a probe into eBay<\/a>\u2019s $1.2 billion acquisition of Depop<\/a>, a London<\/a>-based resale platform, after the merger notice submitted by the companies met the legal requirements of an initial review.<\/p>\n

The Competition and Markets Authority<\/a> said in a statement on Monday that it has notified eBay<\/a> Inc. and Depop<\/a> Limited that their deal would be investigated under the U.K.\u2019s Enterprise Act, which was passed in 2002.<\/p>\n

More from WWD<\/p>\n

The probe, also known as the first phase of a review, was launched months after eBay announced its acquisition of Depop in February. The deal was expected to close this second quarter.<\/p>\n

Under the deal, one of the world\u2019s most popular e-commerce platforms<\/a> would buy Depop from Etsy for $1.2 billion in cash, nearly half a decade since Etsy bought the Gen Z resale platform for over $1.6 billion.<\/p>\n

A CMA review, however, does not necessarily reflect negatively on the deal. It just means it is big enough to show up on CMA\u2019s radar, which is on the lookout for mergers and acquisitions that could hurt competition, resulting in higher prices, fewer choices, and lesser innovation.<\/p>\n

Although the CMA did not specify what had exactly merited the review, the law allows the watchdog to review a deal when it meets certain criteria, such as a significant market share or an annual turnover of 100 million pounds ($133.5 million) for the company being acquired.<\/p>\n

The law gives CMA 40 days to do the initial review, wherein the watchdog would have to see if the deal has a likely chance to hurt competition. If it does, then a more in-depth review called phase 2 would be launched.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe deadline for the CMA to announce its decision whether to refer the Merger for a phase 2 investigation is therefore 6 August 2026,\u201d the notice read. It remains to be seen what the investigation would mean for the deal. If there are no competition concerns, then the deal could be cleared. Otherwise, appropriate remedies would have to be made. As a last resort, the CMA has the power to \u201cunwind<\/a>\u201d the merger.<\/p>\n

Best of WWD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United Kingdom antitrust watchdog has launched a probe into eBay\u2019s $1.2 billion acquisition of Depop, a London-based…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11964,212817,520,59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-628087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-competition-and-markets-authority","tag-depop","tag-ebay","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}