{"id":82487,"date":"2017-07-12T14:33:37","date_gmt":"2017-07-12T14:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=ce50479a35622eaf276446cefd2d2144"},"modified":"2017-07-12T14:33:37","modified_gmt":"2017-07-12T14:33:37","slug":"news-story-cma-publishes-annual-report-for-201617","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=82487","title":{"rendered":"News story: CMA publishes annual report for 2016\/17"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The report<\/a>, which has been laid before parliament, looks back on the work the CMA<\/abbr> carried out during 2016\/17, and highlights the progress the organisation has made in the 3 years since it took on its role.<\/p>\n

The CMA<\/abbr> is determined to protect consumers from illegal anti-competitive practices and unfair trading. In 2016\/17 it found that competition law had been broken in 9 investigations, with penalties of \u00a3100 million, including the biggest fine<\/a> in the history of the UK competition regime. It also secured<\/a> the UK regime\u2019s first company director disqualification for breaking competition law, underlining that individuals must take personal responsibility for complying with competition law.<\/p>\n

Through its consumer enforcement in the past year, the CMA<\/abbr> has helped to ensure that people are not misled on price discounts when buying groceries<\/a> and get a fair contract from their cloud storage<\/a> provider.<\/p>\n

In 2016\/17, the CMA<\/abbr> published final reports and implemented wide-ranging packages of remedies in 2 of the biggest market investigations ever undertaken by a UK competition authority, into the \u00a310 billion energy sector<\/a> and the \u00a335 billion retail banking sector<\/a>. Along with the legal services market study<\/a>, which it concluded in December 2016, these whole-market reviews have laid the foundations for significant changes to these sectors to the benefit of households and businesses across the UK. It also recently published update reports in its 2 ongoing market studies, into care homes<\/a> for the elderly in England and Wales and digital comparison tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The CMA<\/abbr> is increasingly seeing the benefits of being a single organisation, following its creation through a merger of the Competition Commission and Office of Fair Trading. Streamlining merger control has enabled the CMA<\/abbr> to operate with increased pace and to better target its interventions, which reduces the burden on business whilst still protecting consumers. High-profile mergers which the CMA<\/abbr> investigated in 2016\/17 include Ladbrokes\/Coral<\/a>, Intercontinental Exchange\/Trayport<\/a> and Acadia Healthcare Company\/Priory Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The CMA<\/abbr> has remained a strong voice for competition across the UK and overseas, advising and challenging policy-makers domestically and supporting the development of the competition and consumer regimes internationally. This year the CMA<\/abbr> has successfully influenced UK government policy, including through formal recommendations on the draft Higher Education Bill<\/a>, and has worked with devolved governments on a variety of issues.<\/p>\n

The CMA<\/abbr> has also today published its impact assessment<\/a>, which says that work the CMA<\/abbr> has carried out over the past 3 years is expected to deliver direct benefits to consumers of over \u00a33 billion. For the third year running, the CMA<\/abbr> has exceeded its target to achieve \u00a310 of direct consumer benefit for every \u00a31 it costs to run.<\/p>\n

David Currie, CMA<\/abbr> Chairman, said:<\/p>\n

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As we pass the important milestone of our first 3 years as the UK\u2019s primary competition and consumer agency, I am pleased with our achievements to date. We have continued to make a real difference for consumers and businesses across the UK, to improve how we work and to build ever stronger partnerships at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

We have successfully concluded our work in some of the biggest sectors of the UK economy this year, delivering tangible effects for consumers and protecting them from anti-competitive practices and unfair trading.<\/p>\n

We are also realising the benefits of being a single, integrated competition and consumer body, increasing our impact and efficiency.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t doubt the challenges ahead, with the need to ensure consumers, including the vulnerable, get a good deal in a rapidly evolving marketplace. We will remain active in the year ahead \u2013 enforcing the law, protecting consumers, preventing anti-competitive mergers and making markets work well for households and businesses right across the UK.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has today published its annual report for 2016\/17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}