The Uber-Grab merger and the potentially anti-competitive consequences of the battle for ride-hailing dominance

On March 26th 2018, news broke that the global ride-hailing giant Uber agreed to sell its Southeast Asian operations to its local competitor Grab. Four days later, a CoRe Blog post put forward a first assessment of the potentially anti-competitive consequences of the merger as well as the related phenomenon of common ownership in the ride-hailing sector. Since the publication of the post, the Uber-Grab merger has been approved, and similar transactions (e.g. between Uber and Careem) have taken place. In addition, the Competition Commission of India has investigated the common ownership of Uber and its local competitor Ola. This Blog Highlight offers the ideal opportunity to draw attention to the continued relevance of the original analysis, while also updating it to take account of recent developments. The resulting article thus offers a preliminary guide to merger control and common ownership in the ride-hailing sector (and the platform economy more broadly).