FCA's Competition Law Concurrency Guidance

Since 1 April 2015, the UK financial services community has awaited with some trepidation the use by the FCA of its new "concurrent competition law powers".These enable the FCA to investigate and sanction companies for breaching the UK/EU competition law rules on anti-competitive agreements and abuse of dominance (behavioural competition rules).The FCA can also carry out market studies and make market investigation references to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) where it has concerns about how particular markets are functioning for consumers.In order to regulate the way in which they go about their concurrent functions, the FCA and the CMA have entered into a formal MoU.The expectation is, however, that the FCA should exercise these powers where they relate to financial services.