On 25 April, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013
(the Act) received Royal Assent, marking the
culmination of a two year process to reform important aspects of UK
competition law. When the Act was published on 2 May, lawyers
finally had the opportunity to assess the full extent of the
changes that will be made to the competition law regime, after
almost a year of parliamentary debate. (While the 284 page Act
contains a range of other measures loosely related to the
Government's over-arching growth agenda, such as targeted
reforms to employment law and changes to copyright laws, this
update will focus on its competition law aspects.)
The key change arising from the Act will be the merger of the two
UK competition authorities, the Office of Fair Trading
(OFT) and Competition Commission
(CC), to form a new Competition and Markets
Authority (CMA). In addition, the Act introduces
important changes to investigative procedures in antitrust cases
(concerning
