Amazon’s purchase of Deliveroo stake gets UK watchdog’s provisional blessing again

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s competition regulator has restated its provisional clearance of Amazon’s purchase of a 16% stake in online delivery group Deliveroo but changed the basis of its approval.

Amazon led a $575 million fundraising in Deliveroo in May last year with what the two parties called “a minority investment”. Having launched an investigation into the deal in December, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally cleared the deal in April, saying Deliveroo could go out of business without Amazon’s investment.

On Wednesday the CMA restated its provisional clearance – this time purely on competition grounds.

(Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle)