Ousted CMA chair Bokkerink defends tenure

Saturday 08 February 2025 9:58 am
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Saturday 08 February 2025 10:00 am

Marcus Bokkerink, the sacked chairman of the Competitors and Markets Authority (CMA), has given a staunch defence of his tenure on the regulator.

Bokkerink was ousted by the federal government final month in what legal professionals described because the “most overtly political” regulatory intervention of current years.

The transfer, which noticed Bokkerink changed by former Amazon exec Doug Gurr, shocked Metropolis advisers on the time and was seen as a transparent sign of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ strategy to regulators.

However in a 5 web page doc revealed on Linkedin, Bokkerink argued he had supported financial development and independence from “political intervention” all through his management.

Bokkerink mentioned he had been a eager “advocate of an strategy to driving financial development that prioritises the advantages for customers and companies throughout the UK, according to the CMA’s statutory duties.”

This meant “recognising the important function that competitors and shopper selection play in creating the circumstances for increased productiveness, innovation and funding to diffuse throughout the economic system as a substitute of being held again by just a few highly effective incumbents setting the foundations for everybody else”.

Citing examples together with airport slots, housebuilding and toddler formulation, Bokkerink insisted he had routinely “advocated for the easing or lifting of presidency guidelines and laws that maintain again efficient competitors, funding and development.”

Bokkerink additionally mentioned he protected the “stability and predictability that comes from … having independence from politics on particular person shopper safety and competitors enforcement selections”, including: “Traders put a value on the danger of political intervention, unpredictability and inconsistency. And so they demand increased returns, and even decline to take a position, if this danger is excessive.”

He wrote: “The draft plan which the CMA revealed for session at first of the yr units out the actions the CMA was planning to take . . . to drive additional this technique of delivering a prioritised set of constructive outcomes for individuals, companies and the economic system.

“The federal government has indicated it seeks a distinct strategy to what’s set out in that plan . . . whereas it’s not but specific what that totally different strategy will likely be, there’s after all all the time an alternate, and I want Doug and the crew the perfect of luck.”