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The UK’s competition regulator will speed up its investigations in order to try to unlock greater investment into the country, the newly installed chair of the regulator has said.
Writing in the Financial Times, Doug Gurr said the agency would make its merger and market investigations “as simple and rapid as possible”.
The CMA will also bring in greater sector expertise so that businesses do not have to waste time educating the regulator about their industry.
“We know it costs businesses when they have to deal with lengthy and uncertain investigations,” he said. “Good decisions, clear decisions, rapid decisions — that’s what you tell us you need and that’s on us to deliver.”
Gurr, the former head of Amazon UK, was named as the Competition and Markets Authority’s interim chair last week, after former chair Marcus Bokkerink was ousted by ministers.
He wrote that “a regulatory environment that encourages the greatest possible level of business investment” would be the agency’s new “north star”, while also stressing the need to protect consumers.
Gurr ran Amazon’s British operations during the tech group’s tussle with the CMA over its minority investment in Deliveroo and is expected to take a more friendly approach towards business.
The CMA was previously criticised for being too interventionist, with its delay in approving Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision seen as damaging the UK’s standing internationally.
“Last year, the UK again delivered the lowest level of business investment in the G7. This has been true for far too long,” wrote Gurr. “We want both domestic and international businesses to see the UK as a great place to invest.”
He added: “This means giving start-ups and venture backers the confidence to launch their businesses here, not elsewhere in the world. It means encouraging multinationals — who have a pretty much free choice to place their investments anywhere in the [Europe, Middle East and Africa] timezone — to choose the UK.”
Gurr was called by the government about the role shortly before Bokkerink was ousted last week. He has been appointed as interim chair for up to 18 months following the sudden departure.
As well as his CMA role, which is part time, he is the director of the Natural History Museum and chair of the Alan Turing Institute. In order to take up the CMA position he resigned from roles at UK Biobank, Genomics England and Permira.
He and CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell will on Tuesday host the CMA’s new “growth and investment council”, which features representative groups such as the CBI, to discuss the agency’s draft annual plan, which was published earlier this month before Bokkerink’s resignation.
The events of the past week have raised questions about whether the CMA’s draft annual plan, which already mentions ‘growth’ 111 times, will be overhauled to better align with the government’s objectives.
A finalised plan is expected to be published in March after the agency has been given its “strategic steer”, a document setting out the government’s expectations for the regulator.
The CMA is also looking to cut 10 per cent of staff, which it blamed last week on a “budgeting issue”.
