UK: Ann Pope on the future of competition enforcement

On Tuesday, November 13, Ann Pope, the Senior Director for Antitrust Enforcement at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), delivered a speech at the Thomson Reuters 2018 Competition Law Conference concerning the future of antitrust enforcement in the UK.

She said, “One of the key concerns expressed in the past about our Competition Act case work was the speed of cases, with some OFT cases taking several years. It was also felt that there were not enough investigations and numbers of infringement decisions were too low.”

Continuing on, she said, “Raising awareness of competition law remains a priority for the CMA because we know that businesses awareness is worryingly low. Our latest research, based on surveying 1200 businesses, shows that less than a quarter of businesses claimed they were very or fairly familiar with competition law, and 16% had never heard of competition law… This type of compliance work is particularly important with Brexit which is creating a significant increase in regulatory and compliance work for businesses, potentially crowding out competition and other compliance messages and activities.”