10 December 2008
The Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission have published the full transcripts of two roundtable sessions, held on 2 October 2008 as part of their joint merger guidelines review project. The transcripts are of discussions between prominent external economists and CC/OFT staff and members on different aspects of the economics of merger control.
Background
The Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission have been conducting a review of the merger guidelines documents they issued at the time the Enterprise Act 2002 came into effect. These documents will be revised and combined into a single UK substantive merger guidelines document, to be issued jointly by both agencies.
As part of this process of review, the CC and OFT held two roundtable sessions at the CC on 2 October 2008, at which prominent economists discussed some of the more complex issues in the substantive assessment of mergers, with staff and commissioners from the OFT and CC. Peter Freeman, chairman of the Competition Commission welcomed the guests, after which there were two sessions, each lasting half a day:
Non-horizontal mergers, chaired by Dr Amelia Fletcher, Chief Economist of the OFT, with
Download Non-horizontal effects: How far should guidelines go? (pdf 269 kb)
Co-ordinated effects, chaired by Dr Peter Davis, Deputy Chairman of the CC, with
Download Coordinated effects: What is the right analytical threshold? (pdf 256 kb)
Staff and members from the CC and OFT participated in both sessions, including John Davies (CC Chief Economist), Professor Bruce Lyons (CC member), Dr John Collings (CC member), Dr Chris Walters (Associate Director, OFT mergers branch) and Dr Nicola Mazzarotto (Head of Policy Analysis, CC).
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