Just Eats £200m Hungryhouse acquistion referred for in-depth investigation

Just EatJust Eat’s acquisition of Hungryhouse has been referred for an ‘in-depth merger investigation’, following the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) warnings last week.

The CMA announced it would launch an ‘in-depth phase two investigation’ if Just Eat could not provide evidence of how it would resolve the government department’s competition concerns. It turns out Just Eat failed to do this, and now will face further investigation of its Hungryhouse acquisition.

The in-depth investigation will be carried out by an independent group of CMA panel members. This group has until 2 November 2017 to decide whether the Just Eat acquisition of Hungryhouse does indeed harm the restaurants using the services due to lack of competition.

“Both companies provide online takeaway ordering services,” said the CMA in a statement. “These give restaurants the opportunity to reach a wide pool of people, as well as offer customers the convenience of choosing from a large range of takeaway providers in one place.

“Following its initial investigation into the merger, the CMA has found that the companies are close competitors because of the similarity of their service and their broad geographical coverage.”