The UK's competition authority spent fifteen months on a partnership it ultimately said wasn't a merger at all. Background The UK Competition and Markets Authority closed its merger inquiry into the Microsoft–OpenAI partnership on 5 March 2025, concluding that there was no basis to review the arrangement under the UK's merger control regime, and published a full decision on 15 April 2025. The inquiry had examined whether the terms of Microsoft's investment and commercial arra

The management-services-organisation model is how private equity gets into law firms without technically owning them. Background Rules against non-lawyer ownership of law firms remain in force across most of the United States, but private capital has found a structure that works around them without technically breaching them: the management services organisation, or MSO. Under this model, practising attorneys retain formal ownership of the law firm itself, while a private-equ