Keynote speech to the Association of Corporate Counsel Europe seminar

Introduction

Good morning and thank you for inviting me to speak to you. I am always particularly pleased to have the chance to speak to General Counsel and especially General Counsel with a responsibility for jurisdictions beyond the UK since this gives a double safeguard against either the descent into competition theology or the overly parochial framing of debate.

This month is likely to see publication of the Government’s consultation on possible reforms to the UK’s competition regime and the possible creation of a single competition and markets authority to replace the present institutional arrangements whereby different roles are assigned to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), as an initial investigatory and first phase review body, and the Competition Commission (CC), conducting in-depth inquiries into cases referred to it and with extensive powers to impose remedies.

I am confident that the debate which will follow on publication of that consultation document and the course eventually adopted in the UK will be closely followed in many other jurisdic-tions which either have gone down the single authority route or are thinking of doing so or, as in the USA, are extremely unlikely to do so. So, in a very real sense, the world will be watching the UK over the coming months.

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