>who elected Microsoft?
citizen: I want to paint my house blue
mayor: I unilaterally forbid you from doing that, on the grounds that blue houses look unsightly
citizen: that's undemocratic!
mayor: who elected you to decide painting your house blue?
citizen: I want to paint my house blue
mayor: I unilaterally forbid you from doing that, on the grounds that blue houses look unsightly
citizen: that's undemocratic!
mayor: who elected you to decide painting your house blue?
Those rules are not the same as those for individuals.
That is precisely what it means to say that one person, with a certain amount of resources, can do things that a group of people, with the same amount of pooled resources, is forbidden from doing.
Lord Templeman, law lord, in Hazell v Hammersmith and Fulham summarized the law thusly:
> That report[Case of Sutton's Hospital], although largely incomprehensible in 1990, has been accepted as "express authority" that at common law it is an incident to a corporation to use its common seal for the purpose of binding itself to anything which a natural person could bind himself and to deal with its property as a natural person might deal with his own
I'm not claiming that microsoft should be allowed to do the merger on the basis that individuals can choose to paint their house blue, only pointing out that "microsoft isn't elected either" isn't a valid rebuttal to the objection that unilateral decisions by unelected bureaucrats are undemocratic.
The thing is that the CMA is appointed by the government, which is elected.
It’s like complaining about a speeding ticket because the cop wasn’t elected.
Microsoft is complaining that the mayor, in their example, was not elected.