Chillin’ Competition Conference A Brave New World… or Perhaps Not? Natura Gràcia 25 October 2017

Waiting for the lightbulb moment…

And the clock is ticking 30 March 2019 The UK outside the EU, but treated as though a member state for some purposes? Article 50 extension? Withdrawal agreement takes effect in future? Formal deadline for agreement Transitional arrangements? 29 March 2017 December 2017? September 2018 “Sufficient progress” Practical deadline for agreement “Phase one” “Phase two” Negotiations – withdrawal issues Ratification Negotiations – future relationship Money Citizens’ rights Northern Ireland border

The mergers puzzle The end game 30-50 additional Phase 1 cases / 6 additional Phase 2 UK turnover outside EEA Voluntary regime: really? Global mergers, global remedies Divergence in theories of harm (e.g. innovation?) Public interest/national security But until then Cut-off for allocation of cases Appeal process Article 9 or 4 requests? “We have good co-operation with DG COMP in this area; it listens carefully to what we say, but being the decision-maker is a significant difference that could be of benefit, because some times those decisions might go in a direction we did not care for”, Lord Currie, Chairman of CMA, 14 September 2017

And then antitrust The end game 50% increase in workload cooperation/information sharing: ICN, OECD, ECN? Global cartels: another authority to deal with Cherry picking on substance… “Particularly in the early years, it is in no one’s interest to have a huge amount of litigation, challenge and uncertainty about all sorts of concepts that are effectively settled and understood”, Sarah Cardell, General Counsel of CMA, 14 September 2017 But until then Case allocation/prioritisation Commitments, monitoring Leniency

Can the CMA handle it? We will be involved in much bigger and arguably more complex cases than we typically deal with currently– Lord Currie, Chairman of CMA, 14 September 2017 Voluntary merger regime but can’t control parties’ notifying Sectoral regulators Information sharing and cooperation (dawn raids, evidence) If no extra £££, both CMA resource management options have ‘political’ angle: scale back discretionary work (101, 102, market studies and investigations); or go lighter-touch and slipstream EC or other agencies Choices, choices, choices… A19680389