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Ministers have expelled the chairman of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, as the government seeks to cut regulation as part of Labour’s growth agenda.
The government will announce the departure of Marcus Bokkerink as chairman of the regulator on Tuesday evening after an intervention by business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Bokkerink, former managing director of Boston Consulting Group, was appointed in 2022. CMA presidents can serve terms of up to five years.
The Ministry of Trade and Business made it clear Monday evening to Bokkerink that it believed the regulator was not sufficiently focused on growth, according to a government official.
The government has appointed Doug Gurr as the new interim president of the CMA.
Gurr led Amazon’s UK business during the company’s fight with the CMA over its minority investment in Deliveroo, which the regulator ultimately approved in 2020. He is currently director of the Natural History Museum from London.
Bokkerink could not immediately be reached for comment. The CMA and the Department of Business had no immediate comment.
The competition regulator has been the subject of complaints to Labor ministers from business leaders frustrated by what they see as an overly interventionist approach to deals.
“We know that (the CMA’s) performance has not been good enough. There is a lot of frustration about this across businesses,” a government official said. “We hear everyone’s dissatisfaction.”
The CMA faced heavy criticism from Microsoft in 2023 for its handling of the tech giant’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The agency finally approved the agreement between the two US-based companies after initially seeking to block it.
In October last year, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also targeted the body at a speech to business leaderstelling them he would “ensure that all regulators in this country, particularly our economic and competition regulators, take growth as seriously as this room does”.
Eleven members of the CMA’s 33-member merger committee, a group of independent experts that decides whether a deal that could threaten competition can go ahead, are expected to resign later this year. The sales department is responsible for appointing their replacements.
A government official said it was reasonable to assume that more of these new panel members would have business experience.