Ministers urged the chairman of the UK competition regulator

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Ministers have pressed the chair of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority as the government seeks to dial back the regulation as part of its Labor Growth Agenda.

The government will announce the resignation of the regulator’s chairman, Marcus Bockkern, on Tuesday night following the intervention of business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, people familiar with the matter said.

Bockkernck, a former managing director at Boston Consulting Group, was appointed in 2022. CMA chairs can serve for up to five years.

The Department of Commerce and Trade made it clear to Bokkernk on Monday night that it feels the regulator is focused enough on growth, according to a government official.

The Government has appointed Doug Gurr as interim chairman of the CMA. Former country manager of Amazon UK, Gurr is currently director of the Natural History Museum in London.

Bokkerink could not immediately be reached for comment. The CMA and the Department of Commerce did not immediately comment.

The competition watchdog has addressed complaints to Labor ministers from business leaders who are upset about what they see as an overly interventionist approach to deals.

“We know that the CMA’s performance is not good enough. There is a lot of frustration from business around this,” said a government official. “We are hearing happiness from everyone.”

CMA in 2010 He has come under fire for his handling of Microsoft’s massive tech acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023. The agency Finally, he approved the agreement between the two American businesses after initially seeking to block it.

In October of last year, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also took aim at the body A speech for business leaders“All the regulators in this country, especially our economic and competition regulators, will take growth as part of it,” he said.

11 members of the 33-member CMA Merger Panel, an independent panel of experts who will decide whether any deal that threatens competition can go ahead, will come down later this year. It is the business unit responsible for appointing their successors.

A government body said it was reasonable to assume that most of those panelists would have a business background.