UK ousts antitrust chief, brings in former Amazon exec

Sounds like they're going for taking a lighter hand on regulation.

Hmm. You know, I've never really thought much about antitrust law in the UK.

I normally think of antitrust in the context of the US. You have a big market there. While the US does have FTAs with some other countries, it doesn't presently with anyone with a domestic market nearly as large as the US's is.

But...that's not the situation with the UK. Post-Brexit, the UK isn't in the EU. It's got a market linked to the EU's, due to the TCA and geographic proximity, but it doesn't have regulatory authority over what goes on in the EU the way it did when in the EU's.

The UK's domestic economy isn't tiny, but it's definitely smaller than the EU's is; about a fifth the size.

My guess is that that means that UK antitrust regulators have less ability to influence what those companies that it interacts with do, because ultimately, being too-restrictive -- which affects a company's dealings in the EU, and could make it less-competitive in the EU, where the costs of any constraint imposed by regulation are most-likely higher due to greater scale -- might mean that a company would just choose to do business in the EU but not the UK; they'd always have to weigh that with every antitrust restriction that the UK imposes. Like, say Company A and Company B both do business in the EU and UK and want to merge. EU antitrust regulators are okay with it, but UK antitrust regulators are not. The EU's economy is about five times that of the UK's, so the inability to merge is likely going to impact them something like to five times as much in the EU market to the degree that it would in the UK. If they think that the benefit that comes from merging is more than the loss of business in the UK, they might choose to exit the UK rather than comply with the UK antitrust regulation.

In turn, you would expect the UK's antitrust regulators to aim not to place sufficiently-restrictive requirements such that that occurs, because that'd usually be counterproductive to obtaining a competitive market in the UK.

So I'd kind of think that the post-Brexit UK would be more-inclined to take a lighter hand on antitrust regulation than it did prior to Brexit.

I guess maybe things might work the same way in, say, Canada with the US. I don't think I can recall Canadian antitrust regulators clamping down hard on a company doing business in both the US and Canada -- it's usually US antitrust regulators taking issue with something. I've certainly read more about EU antitrust activity affecting US companies I use than Canadian, though I'd guess that there are more multinationals that I run into that operate in the Canadian market than the EU market.

Hm.

I guess that'd apply to something like mergers. But I guess maybe there are other forms of antitrust regulation where that wouldn't come up, like restrictions on how a company with a dominant market share might link products together, and there maybe it wouldn't apply -- you could independently and separately follow different regulatory systems in the UK and EU. A company wouldn't be faced with a "follow UK regulation and be impacted in the EU market" choice then -- it could follow EU rules in the EU and UK rules in the UK. So maybe Brexit will change the sort of antitrust regulation that happens in the UK, too -- it might still do a lot of "Google is a dominant search provider, so it cannot also link search results to its own mapping services" or something, but not say "Company X cannot purchase Company Y".

2 comments

The "Labor" party everyone! Like the Social Democrats in many EU countries, this strain of "left-center" has embraced Neoliberalism and fuck the working class for decades now, full well knowing, that this is a great breeding ground for fascism.
Sounds like they're going for taking a lighter hand on regulation.
Hmm. You know, I've never really thought much about antitrust law in the UK.
I normally think of antitrust in the context of the US. You have a big market there. While the US does have FTAs with some other countries, it doesn't presently with anyone with a domestic market nearly as large as the US's is.
But...that's not the situation with the UK. Post-Brexit, the UK isn't in the EU. It's got a market linked to the EU's, due to the TCA and geographic proximity, but it doesn't have regulatory authority over what goes on in the EU the way it did when in the EU's.
The UK's domestic economy isn't tiny, but it's definitely smaller than the EU's is; about a fifth the size.
My guess is that that means that UK antitrust regulators have less ability to influence what those companies that it interacts with do, because ultimately, being too-restrictive -- which affects a company's dealings in the EU, and could make it less-competitive in the EU, where the costs of any constraint imposed by regulation are most-likely higher due to greater scale -- might mean that a company would just choose to do business in the EU but not the UK; they'd always have to weigh that with every antitrust restriction that the UK imposes. Like, say Company A and Company B both do business in the EU and UK and want to merge. EU antitrust regulators are okay with it, but UK antitrust regulators are not. The EU's economy is about five times that of the UK's, so the inability to merge is likely going to impact them something like to five times as much in the EU market to the degree that it would in the UK. If they think that the benefit that comes from merging is more than the loss of business in the UK, they might choose to exit the UK rather than comply with the UK antitrust regulation.
In turn, you would expect the UK's antitrust regulators to aim not to place sufficiently-restrictive requirements such that that occurs, because that'd usually be counterproductive to obtaining a competitive market in the UK.
So I'd kind of think that the post-Brexit UK would be more-inclined to take a lighter hand on antitrust regulation than it did prior to Brexit.
I guess maybe things might work the same way in, say, Canada with the US. I don't think I can recall Canadian antitrust regulators clamping down hard on a company doing business in both the US and Canada -- it's usually US antitrust regulators taking issue with something. I've certainly read more about EU antitrust activity affecting US companies I use than Canadian, though I'd guess that there are more multinationals that I run into that operate in the Canadian market than the EU market.
Hm.
I guess that'd apply to something like mergers. But I guess maybe there are other forms of antitrust regulation where that wouldn't come up, like restrictions on how a company with a dominant market share might link products together, and there maybe it wouldn't apply -- you could independently and separately follow different regulatory systems in the UK and EU. A company wouldn't be faced with a "follow UK regulation and be impacted in the EU market" choice then -- it could follow EU rules in the EU and UK rules in the UK. So maybe Brexit will change the sort of antitrust regulation that happens in the UK, too -- it might still do a lot of "Google is a dominant search provider, so it cannot also link search results to its own mapping services" or something, but not say "Company X cannot purchase Company Y".