As a former executive at one of the ‘Big Four’ management consultancy firms, Marcus Bokkerink is not an obvious champion for the rights of people over mega corporations intent on market domination. That was nonetheless the role he found himself playing at a parliamentary select committee hearing in May 2023.
Weeks earlier, Bokkerink had caused multi-trillion-dollar US tech conglomerate Microsoft to suffer what its president told the BBC was “the darkest day in [its] four decades in Britain”.
Bokkerink chaired the UK’s competition watchdog, which had recently blocked the tech giant from acquiring Activision Blizzard, a video game developer responsible for some of the most lucrative pieces of media created in the 21st century, including the Call of Duty franchise. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) argued that by making Microsoft the third-largest video game company in the world overnight, the deal might damage competition and negatively affect consumers. Among other things, it cited concerns that Microsoft would take advantage of its increased market dominance to raise the price of its Xbox Game Pass subscription, which the firm forcefully denied.
