Business secretary Vince Cable has announced details of the new Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) which will replace the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and the Competition Commission (CC) in 2014.
The new authority will be the UK's single leading body responsible for promoting competition and will begin shadow operations on 1 October 2013, becoming fully functional and operational on 1 April 2014. It brings together the CC with the competition and certain consumer functions of the OFT and will be responsible for advocating competition both at home and abroad.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is to consult on the government's proposals for the initial CMA powers and strategic priorities, and is also looking for feedback on the draft steer it has published outlining the government's goals in relation to competition.
Responses to these two consultations must be made by 6 September 2013. There will then be a second BIS consultation document that will provide further draft statutory instruments and a second consultation on the CMA's guidance, which are due to be published in mid-September 2013.
The current consultation is looking at several key pieces of secondary legislation, including maximum penalties for failure to comply with the CMA's information gathering powers; legal rules to determine when an enterprise is to be treated as controlled by a person and the turnover of an enterprise for the administrative penalty for failure to comply with merger interim measures; modification of the scheme dealing with public interest concerns in 'European relevant merger situations'; and the timing of merger fee payments.
BIS has also announced the names of five non-executive directors who have been appointed to the CMA board. They include Roger Witcomb, who is chairman of the CC and a former finance director at National Power.
The CC is expected to announce its preliminary findings with regard to remedies for promoting competition in the statutory audit market before the end of July, with the final report due in September.
