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Maybe it came as a relief for the UK competition regulator to get a good summary this week. Margherita della Valle, the chief executive of Vodafone, sang her praise after winning the approval for a £ 16.5bn union with the three United Kingdom, saying the EU should follow Britain’s approach.
Compliments have been in a brief supply to the authority of competition and markets. The government forced Marcus Bokkerink as a chair because he did not think he was getting quite seriously. Its successor, Doug Gurr, the former head of Amazon UK, has properly supported “a regulatory environment that encourages the largest possible level of business investment”.
It is seductive for governments to seek antitrust authorities in their political efforts, rather than focusing on keeping competitive markets. There are many of this in connection with: China this week revived antitrust investigations into Google and Nvidia to give herself a lever in a fight with the US -threatened tariffs.
The EU, meanwhile, is agonizing whether its fierce Antitrust access has kept Europe again from construction companies that can compete with technology giants from the US and China. Mario Draghi, the former President of the European Central Bank, suggested in a report last year that the EU should stop being so careful about consolidation.
Strengthening the technocrats to pursue numerous purposes at the same time does not work well. “They are not convenient to make the trades faced by politicians. They have to do a job properly,” says a competition lawyer. The government had the last word for the United Kingdom Unions, but made the regulation independent in 2002: if it wants such powers to return, it must say so.
But regulators do not have to act on a political and judicial vacuum, imposing their theories of economic damage without coping with the consequences of failure. While it would be wrong that a government that is desperate for growing to harass CMA to change its purpose, the latter should not be immune from the attack or have any of its interrogation decisions.
It is right to criticize how the CMA has been working in recent years, especially since Brexit break in 2021, when it should no longer push the EU for international unions. The issues came to a head in 2023 when he finally approved Microsoft’s $ 75 billion Activision Blizzard after 21 months of uncertainty, as it initially recognized globally blocking it.
This crystallized various complaints about CMA. One is that it takes a long time to make decisions, and the envelopes of the companies in what a lawyer calls “a mystery of insecurity” by defining exactly what it worries about. “They tie you to the knots with a trillion questions and you end up again where you started,” says one chief executive.
A second complaint is that it moved to antitrust activism on a global scale, even when the UK market was only a small part of an international union. It was one of the national regulators who advanced a tougher approach to receipts from US technology companies, including Lina Khan, who is now withdrawing as chair of the Federal Commission of the US.
Humor has changed and the appointment of Gurr is no coincidence, given how difficult the American companies have gathered behind the scenes for CMA. Even a former CMA official says she lost some of the feelings of the proportion and limitation she once used, becoming dark and official.
There are structural holes in how CMA works. His antitrust decisions are made from panels, with limited basis for appeal only to a court. This runs counter to the American system, in which some FTC attempts to curb the business under Khan were overthrown by the courts. It has also been difficult to recruit business people to sit with economists in panels.
Finishing is a body that has often worked slowly, inefficient and with little need to account for the outside world. This is not just the appearance of companies that will simply prefer to continue to work and not worry, but also their educated CMA elements. Sarah Cardell, chief executive, has said he wants to be more transparent and less opposed.
While the CMA must change, Gurr has not shown so far that he intends to remove him from his essential role in reinforcing the competition and service of consumer well -being. The government may be inclined to push things further by introducing the intention of encouraging growth and investment in its official mandate.
My tips are, no. It can make a title, but it will cause confusion, interfere with CMA reforms and have no help. Technicals are being nudied in the right direction.
john.gapper@ft.com
