The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC)’s offices look as if the state watchdog has moved out when I visit to interview Brian McHugh, the commission member overseeing competition enforcement and mergers. The walls are bare except for a modern painting in McHugh’s office. Only himself and the CCPC’s communications manager have come in to meet me. 

Since the onset of Covid-19, lawyers, economists and clerical workers have deserted the vast open plan – one of several floors occupied by the organisation in a recent building shared, among others, with the Companies Registration Office. They form part of the cluster of state agencies dotted around Sean McDermot St, a proud working-class neighbourhood of Dublin’s north inner city. An Bord Pleánala and the Health and Safety Authority are just around the corner. 

The CCPC has been expanding and had 105 staff at the start of this year – up from 89 three years ago. More will be recruited as McHugh expects to receive new powers to fine companies directly for breaches of competition law, examine more mergers as a result of Brexit and contribute to increased European scrutiny of the digital industry. We will detail emerging legislation, which is set to turn him into a central figure in Irish business, over the course of the interview. While the office space the CCPC occupies was full pre-Covid-19, remote working has already become so established that McHugh (who also oversees corporate services) is not sure more will now be needed. 

Just like his office, McHugh offers a no-frills appearance. He is thin with very short hair, piercing blue eyes and speaks in a slow and deliberate manner. A trained energy economist, he worked for 15 years at Northern Ireland’s Utility Regulator before his appointment to the CCPC in September 2017 by then Minister for Business Frances Fitzgerald for a five-year term, renewable once. McHugh is one of four full-time members of the Commission including chairperson Isolde Goggin. He says they form the equivalent of an executive board.

McHugh’s name is signed at the bottom of most CCPC decisions relating to competition law, such as those clearing the full ownership of three private hospitals by Larry Goodman entities and the merger between Flutter and the Stars Group, and I will ask him about those. Before landing on his desk, individual cases go through the hands of teams of one to three experts who live by the acronym SLC – significant lessening of competition. Any such concerns may lead to legal action or, in the case of mergers, to lengthy “phase two” investigations with the potential to impose conditions or simply block the deal. The most complex decisions require joint sign-off with other commission members.

Last month, I wrote about the CCPC’s decision not to investigate the beef industry in June. Under the Freedom of Information Act, I obtained a document trail tracking more than one year of complaints and initial probing by the competition watchdog before it ruled that insufficient evidence was available to dig any further. On the back of that decision, the Irish Farmers’ Association has now engaged Staines Law solicitors to collect more solid information from members of the public on alleged breaches of competition law by beef factories. This is where the interview begins.

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Thomas Hubert (TH): What struck me and what I wrote recently was that on the basis of the many complaints that came in, the CCPC interviewed a lot of people, Teagasc, the Department of Agriculture, farmer organisations… But not the beef processors themselves. And that was very surprising looking at it from the outside. What was the reasoning behind that?

Brian McHugh (BMcH): It is interesting, because it wasn’t at all surprising to us. We have a very easy answer to that one. I think it goes back to how competition law is, and how people view and understand competition law. As you’ll be aware, the complaints made was that there was a cartel in the beef sector. Running a cartel is a very serious offence. It’s a criminal offence, you can end up in jail, you can end up with big fines. If we get evidence of a cartel that satisfies that to open an investigation, the norm is we will go to a judge and apply for a warrant to do a raid. The judge will look for evidence, naturally, as they do in any warrant. We will do a raid. 

Because a cartel, by definition, is a secret organisation of companies, we don’t want to announce it in advance. We want to collect the evidence. We don’t want any evidence destroyed. And then we will, where necessary, interview people under caution where they have the full rights that every other citizen has in terms of a criminal investigation. So if an organisation is accused of a criminal offense or an industry is accused of a criminal offense, we don’t go looking for a warrant without evidence. We won’t get one. 

While, I think, the layman sometimes views competition as a different sphere – why don’t you just knock on the doors of the beef processors and shake them up a bit and find out what’s going on? – it is a criminal process. Everyone has their rights in terms of criminal process and we won’t go looking for a warrant without evidence. So, for us, that was very straightforward. 

We also don’t go and ask people informally, are you running a secret organisation whereby you have a cartel? Where it comes down to accusations of a cartel, then we will act in a certain way and we will treat it as a potential criminal offense, and not some kind of gray area whereby we can just have a chat with them and see what gets sussed out.

TH: Even in terms of the documents and the desktop research, say the corporate structure of the Beef Plan Movement was researched – I saw that in the file, looking at how they are registered – but not so much on the factories’ side. Why that focus? Even the threat of legal action was really more against the complainants than the targets of the complaint.

BMcH: We had complaints from a variety of players, from hundreds of players, as you know, some of them organised together. The issue with the Beef Plan Movement was that they had very publicly stated they were going to act in a way that could potentially break competition law. They had published a kind of manifesto, which suggested that they might act in ways which would breach competition law. So we engaged with them to effectively achieve compliance. 

While, again, people might have some sympathy with farmers who want to boycott or to blockade various factories, there are issues of competition law. So we wrote to them to engage with them to achieve compliance. And the other issue is that legal action can be taken against them by third parties. Many of these individuals will not be aware of that. So I know people might think that highlighting that is some form of a threat, but this was simply to inform them of risks that they’re taking they may not be aware of. 

In cases like that, our goal is to achieve very quick compliance where someone may not be aware that they’re potentially in breach of competition law, that they’re potentially at risk, and for them to change their actions, which is what happened there. So that’s where we did have evidence – we had the manifesto. We achieved an outcome there in terms of trying to get compliance. Again, we didn’t, and we don’t always, depending on the case, go in with all guns blazing around like that. That’s why there’d be a difference in those two cases.

“There’s real issues in that sector. Whether those are competition issues, though, is something that must be looked at, in a very kind of black and white way.”

TH: There were more precise points, like the in-spec bonus for those cattle that meet certain quality criteria, beyond the broader cartel accusation – and you did go into those issues – even some very pointed accusations that maybe some factories named in the file were actually accessing Department of Agriculture computers to look for information and manipulate price, but that wasn’t enough evidence to to act on these in your case?

BMcH: Again, we’ve kind of accusations, which we would have looked into. We would have spoken to the Department of Agriculture, we would have spoken to a number of parties in terms of what they’d seen. And we just didn’t have any kind of solid evidence other than accusations that activities were taking place, which would allow us to open an investigation. 

I mean, the whole industry in terms of the beef sector is under huge pressure. There’s real issues in that sector. Whether those are competition issues, though, is something that must be looked at, in a very kind of black and white way. What evidence is there of potential competition breaches? There’s a huge amount of other real problems in the industry that come through in the complaints, which are understandable. It’s just we’re not in a position to solve them.

TH: As you said, the Beef Plan Movement, and the protesters when they changed names afterwards, were one of the parties you were warning, telling them what the rules were and all the risks that came to them. Is that still the case now? I know you advised them to use producer organisations, which are new and not used that much yet. How much has happened since June when you stopped the actual research into this case? Is there still concern for the CCPC in the way farmers are organising themselves?

BMcH: The kind of behaviours that we’d seen in terms of the blockades have stopped. In terms of our engagement with those groups who were potentially in breach of competition law, that behaviour did stop which is very welcome. In terms of the complaints, as we said, if there’s evidence, we will always look at it. I know some parties are out there trying to find evidence and we will look at it if there is evidence.

I mean, issues within the beef sector have gone back for years and years. I don’t know if you’re aware of the BIDS [Beef Industry Development Society, 2011] case, this is where the beef sector came together to reduce capacity in the beef sector by effectively paying processors to shut down. So we took a case. It goes back to: Where there is evidence, we will take a case. It went to the Supreme Court, it went to the European Court of Justice. And in the end, the beef sector kind of agreed that they weren’t exempt from competition law. So that was a successful outcome in that case. 

This has been a long, long time in terms of the sector’s issues. They always change slightly. But where there is evidence, we will go after it. I think it’s one of the points we would make to anyone: We want good evidence. We enjoy getting good evidence, taking a case, winning a case. That’s what we’re here to do. We don’t sit here thinking there are no competition issues in Ireland. We know that there are. And it’s great to get really strong evidence so that we can take a case. So we’ll always be open to that.

TH: Something a bit broader that came to attention in this beef case is the focus on downstream competition.The risk you really look for is the risk that prices would rise for the consumer. Is competition upstream in sourcing supplies part of your remit at all? 

BMcH: Again, it depends on the case but if there are issues upstream, whether that’s the industry trying to reduce capacity or fix prices that the farmers get in a kind of cartel-like way, we will absolutely look at that and take action, because ultimately, the overall consumer suffers from that. We want companies to compete against one another. And in the long run, that’s where the consumer benefits. 

Wherever it might be in the chain, if there’s anti-competitive behaviour, we’re absolutely interested in it. I think the issues in agriculture and beef are much wider. And in terms of the various practices that people allege are going on, the transparency in terms of what margins different companies along the chain make and what’s fair, what’s not fair – those are different issues from competition law issues, but as we know, they’re very real. 

A huge amount is being discussed about those. There is now talk about what legislation might solve that or improve the position of the farmer. We’re getting on to UTPs [unfair trading practices] now, but it is a different area. It sometimes gets conflated with the competition issues. 

“If producers are conspiring in some way to fix producer prices, we would be concerned because we want markets to work well and competitively.”

TH: Again you brought it back to, ultimately, the consumer pays the price – that’s your bottom line as such. If competition issues arise, it is a concern because it will affect the consumer price. The producer price is not as much concern, it seems to be, in your investigation.

BMcH: Overall, we would have a focus on consumer welfare – all consumers. But if producers are conspiring in some way to fix producer prices, we would be concerned because we want markets to work well and competitively. We wouldn’t reject a case on the basis of, you know, there’s not an obvious big price increase here for consumers, and therefore it’s fine. 

We’ve talked about price, but the issues with the consumer – and the issues with the technology cases, which are received a huge amount of attention, often, there’s no price – for using Google and for using Facebook. But there are real competition issues. So we certainly don’t focus on prices. It might be the easier case to explain. But it wouldn’t be our focus in terms of ruling out anything else.

The cases: Goodman and Flutter

To understand better how the CCPC goes about assessing corporate mergers, I ask McHugh about two recent high-profile cases. In the past few months, Larry Goodman’s often conflictual efforts to gain full control of three private hospitals required competition clearance. McHugh signed off on Goodman entities’ acquisition of the remaining shares they did not yet own in the Galway Clinic on April 24, and in Dublin’s Blackrock and Hermitage Clinics on July 29. He also gave the green light to Paddy Power’s parent company, betting giant Flutter, to merge with the Stars Group of online casinos on May 12.

After each merger decision, the CCPC publishes its determination – except redactions agreed with the companies to remove confidential information. When I move on from beef processing to Goodman’s hospitals, McHugh gives a wry smile.

The determination for Galway Clinic is now published, and those for Blackrock and Hermitage Clinics will follow in the coming weeks. The document details how the CCPC looked at potential threats to competition horizontally in three different ways – in the national and regional private healthcare markets, and by medical specialty. Market share data, however, is redacted. 

I ask McHugh how he came to the decision to clear the merger – especially as there is no set figure over which a player is deemed to control too much of a market. “You would look at market shares and there are various metrics, which would trigger: no concern, some concern, high concern,” he says. The standard tool to calculate concentration is the Hirschman-Herfindahl index. 

In the case of Goodman’s three hospitals, McHugh says market shares “weren’t huge”. He adds: “You’d be looking at competitors: are there other competitors of a similar size? There would be, and therefore, those competitors can take action: they can compete; they can respond to any, for example, price increases, or any other changes that might result from the merged entity having increased power.” This includes measuring competitors’ capacity to increase their offering, and obtaining submissions from them as well as third parties such as health insurers and regulators. 

The CCPC examined the merger of Flutter and Stars into the world’s largest gambling group at the national level because the two companies did not have a sufficient presence across European countries for the European Commission to take on the case. “For Flutter and Stars – and this isn’t unusual – there are several markets that would be looked at in terms of a merger,” says McHugh “You mentioned online, you also have physical betting offices – there was no overlap in that case. Then online you have a huge number of players.”

Market information is less heavily redacted here, and the determination shows broad market shares for the merging companies and their competitors in betting and online gaming, with online poker the only sub-market where they are likely to capture more than 50 per cent of the business. “Stars didn’t have a physical presence in Ireland. When we look at the numbers, and you go through the issues there, there wasn’t a huge amount of competition concern,” says McHugh. “You have the ability of customers to switch, so if Flutter-Stars have, for example, worse prices, then you have various odds checkers that people use where they would check the odds across a variety of betting. The ability of customers to move and to switch would be one element that we would normally look at in a merger.” He also took into account the amount of innovation and activity by new entrants.

“a) We ask a lot of questions; b) the companies are obliged under the law to provide accurate information.”

To clear a merger, the CCPC needs a full view of the companies’ corporate structures and the interests they may have in other market players. The entity that secures ultimate full control of the three Goodman hospitals is the Liechtenstein-based Portlon Trust, which does not publish any corporate filings. I put it to McHugh that this not a transparent organisation, as illustrated by its description in the CCPC’s redacted determination: “The Portlon Trust is […]” Does he feel he always gets enough information from merging companies, and do these redactions undermine the credibility of the CCPC’s merger clearances?

“One of the fundamentals of the information that we expect is the ownership structure, interests in other entities and potential overlaps. So a) we ask a lot of questions; b) the companies are obliged under the law to provide accurate information,” McHugh replies. “We weren’t made aware of specific concerns about a potential overlap between Portlon and other hospital groups.”

While the Portlon Trust argued at the time of the Galway Clinic merger that it had no other controlling interests in public hospitals, the CCPC did not fall for it. Referring to precedents in Ireland and at EU level, it decided: “The Commission must take account of the Portlon Trust’s cross-shareholdings in the owners and/or operators of three private healthcare clinics (i.e., Galway Clinic, Blackrock Clinic and Hermitage Clinic) when assessing the proposed transaction.” Still, its market assessment concluded that after acquiring the remaining 25 per cent it did not yet own in the Galway Clinic, “the increment in the Portlon Trust’s interest in private healthcare services in the State would be minimal. Furthermore an acquisition of sole control over Galway Clinic is unlikely to raise any significant anti-competitive impact since the Portlon Trust (through Parma) already exercises joint control over Galway Clinic in relation to the provision of private healthcare services in the State”.

As to the fact that most information about the Portlon Trust remains inaccessible to the public, McHugh says: “Our role is to satisfy ourselves in terms of SLC and to approve or not on the mergers. In terms of the wider issues as to what company information in the public domain isn’t really our remit. But we do have the powers to ask for information.”

Jumping back to Flutter and Stars, as Paddy Power is known to exclude players if they win too much from the company, I ask McHugh whether customer protection forms part of the CCPC’s decisions. If the terms and conditions or customer service practices of a dominant player become the standard across the industry, is that a merger concern? “One of the potential detriments is a reduction in the quality of the product, which can manifest itself in a number of ways,” says McHugh. “It’s not just about increasing prices, reduction in quality is a relatively standard consideration in mergers.”

EU directive to give CCPC sharper teeth

Another piece of EU legislation came into force last year and, just like the unfair trading practices directive, must be transposed into Irish law by next spring. Its full title is “to empower the competition authorities of member states to be more effective enforcers and to ensure the proper functioning on the internal market”. Competition geeks call it ECN+, after the European Competition Network of watchdogs it intends to boost, including Ireland’s CCPC. 

More practically, it can be summarised in two words: “fining powers”. And McHugh says it is about to cause the largest change the CCPC is facing.

BMcH: The CCPC does not have fining powers, which is very unusual in the European context. There are criminal penalties for things like a cartel, whereby the individual could go to jail and the company could be fined. That’s the current arrangement. That is unusual. Normally, the competition body has the ability to fine in the vast majority of European countries and that just doesn’t happen in Ireland. 

The other element to that is where you have civil issues in competition, such as abuse of dominance. This is what Google has been fined for at the European level, where they abused their dominance and they set up structures whereby other entrants can’t get into the market, for example, in breach of competition law. 

In Ireland, if we do a case into abuse of dominance, we can bring it to court. We can ask the court to stop the activity if it hasn’t already stopped and we can get a declaration that it was a breach of competition law, and effectively the company or companies will be told don’t do that again. There’s no fine. There’s no punishment in any kind of direct way. Even the courts couldn’t fine under the current civil arrangements. 

The whole goal of ECN+ was for Europe to have a consistent approach to enforcing competition law. That was part of it, so we would hope to see it move in line with European administrative fines. If a company in Ireland is, for example, breaching competition law by abusing a dominant position, whereas today, they may – worst case scenario – be told that yes, you did breach competition law and don’t do it again, then in the future, they may be facing a fine from us. 

“We’ve made very clear that without fining powers, it makes our job much harder.”

The bigger companies will be very used to this because they’ll operate in other countries. The UK has had this regime for a long time, as has nearly everyone else. It’s pretty standard. In terms of how it works, again, most other countries have them, so there will be procedures in place, there will be protection in place, there’s a certain right of appeal. 

All of this, obviously, is subject to the legislation going through and the government deciding exactly in detail how this works. We’ve made very clear that without fining powers, it makes our job much harder. Where you have a fine, obviously a company is going to have an incentive to engage with the CCPC. We don’t have a leniency regime in Ireland. If you come forward, you cooperate with us, we can’t give you leniency. But under a fining regime, we will have that power to have a leniency regime. That is a requirement of ECN+ and is linked to the fining regime. 

TH: You say it depends on legislation, where does that stand at the moment? 

BMcH: The legislation in terms of the European directive needs to be transposed by February 2021, so there’s a huge amount of work going on. It is quite a big piece of legislation. We would continue to engage with the Department. Obviously, the legislation will be a Department decision, we would engage with the Department on the issues around the legislation, with this huge amount of detail in terms of getting it right. In our view, it’s very important to get right that we have those powers, that they’re effective and that they work from the off.

TH: Is it the Department of Business or Justice drafting this?

BMcH: The Department of Business is leading it in terms of its responsibility for competition, but there’s quite a number of parties affected and interested. For example, Comreg, the communications regulator, would have competition powers as well, so obviously they have an interest in how the legislation is changed about competition enforcement. 

The other big thing is, not only do people cooperate, but it’s also one of the ways that people come and bring cases to a competition body. For example, if you’re first in, you tend to get zero fine. And that’s a great incentive for companies. Maybe Irish companies are aware of activities going on that potentially breach competition and hopefully there’ll be a leniency regime that they can consider and potentially take advantage of. It changes the whole dynamic for Irish companies in terms of the risk of breaches to competition, and what decisions they have to make in terms of engaging with us.

TH: Would you expect a regime like we see in other jurisdictions, where the fines are a proportion of the size of the business involved?

BMcH: We would expect that if we do get those powers, we will publish a procedure on how we will calculate them. There will be a number of factors, in terms of what the offence was, how much detriment it caused, how long it went on, how much cooperation there was from the companies, at what level of the company people were aware of this. Now, most European competition bodies, including the European Commission have published this guidance, so it follows a well worn practice. It’s predictable and set out. 

If we were to fine, it will be set out against a process and a procedure as to how a fine should be calculated. So there’s an amount of transparency and certainty. Then  assuming that’s the regime that is in the legislation, that could then be appealed to the courts.

*****

Several times during the interview, McHugh mentioned Google. “I hate picking on Google, but they have been fined $5 billion,” he underlines, referring to the online giant’s 2018 abuse of dominance fine from the European Commission. He also referenced Facebook – two companies where the end user pays nothing for the service, and consumer prices are therefore not an issue.

Yet I put it to McHugh that the risk here is that online multinationals capture a rent from the advertising market rather than from the consumer market. Are B2B pricing and competition of as much importance to the CCPC? “Yes, absolutely,” he replies, adding: “In technology, you then get into – in terms of what the harm might be – things like innovation. While there’s no price, if other players can’t get into the market, there’s a lack of innovation.”

McHugh says that online platforms also raise issues with self-preferencing: “Amazon has consumers on one side, who quite like Amazon; on the other side they have companies selling to the consumer, but they also sell themselves to those consumers.” In such cases, what competition authorities look at is not pricing. “It’s about potentially abusive behaviour by someone like Amazon or any of those platforms,” he says. “It’s about the wider detriment over the long run that might occur.”

McHugh raises another piece of EU legislation in the pipeline, though not as advanced as the UTP or ECN+ directives: the Digital Services Act (separate from the controversial proposed taxation of digital services).

“The Commission is committed to passing new legislation this year,” he says. “That’s a very live area. Industry mightn’t see it for a couple years as it feeds through, but those decisions are largely made this year and it’s very interesting.” Discussions so far are pointing towards two new tools for competition authorities to regulate digital markets: market investigations and ex-ante regulation. 

While current rules allow watchdogs to step in only in answer to a breach of competition law by a market player, the new approach would be more proactive. “A market investigation is, there mightn’t be a breach of competition law at all, I’m just going to look at the market: Whether it works well, whether it needs to be remedied, whether it’s at risk of detriment,” says McHugh. “There’s no fines, because no one has broken the law, but I’m going to issue remedies in the market. Players will have to do whatever the remedy might be.”

He points out that the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, which already has these powers, used them to break up the country’s airports. Remedies don’t always have to be so drastic, but they will need to be followed up and implemented by authorities like the CCPC if the EU legislation is passed.

Using the Google example again, McHugh recalls the European decision that forced the company to change how it displayed online shopping search results. “It’s quite detailed in terms of how Google Shopping interacts with Google search results. It’s easy to say that you have broken the law – well, it’s not easy, but you can see they’ve broken the law” he says. Only then does work begin on finding an alternative. “Google will go: well, is this okay? There’s a whole question of who oversees those detailed solutions. For people who are very into competition, that’s new and very interesting.”

Another aspect of the proposed Digital Services Act is so-called ex-ante regulation, which would complement investigations into breaches of competition law after they have occurred. “Ex-ante regulation is this question as to whether certain platforms particularly, or certain digital players, need to be regulated ex-ante and told: you can and can’t do these things, and here’s a set of rules for you that is like a regulation and some body is going to make sure you follow those rules,” McHugh explains. “Should there be any rules, what the rules are and who might enforce them are all things that have been discussed.” 

The CCPC is also part of EU-wide discussions on how a new competition tool based on market investigations and ex-ante regulation would fit together. “Everyone in the competition world is totally engaged in it because we recognise it mightn’t happen for two or three years but decisions will be made now,” McHugh says. With many digital multinationals headquartered in Ireland, this is of particular importance to him. They, too, have taken part in consultations and given their views, he adds.

*****

The importance of European legislation throughout this interview illustrates how much the CCPC is integrated into an EU-wide competition landscape. This is about to be thrown open by Brexit. To understand the implications, I first ask McHugh how the case load is currently divvied up between his office and Brussels. 

BMcH: Any case which effectively impacts on trade across the European Union can be taken by the European Commission, which is a lot of cases. But naturally, there’s a limited amount that the European Commission is going to do and a limited amount of cases that they will take. 

One example of this is motor insurance. We have our case in motor insurance, and the European Commission has a different case in motor insurance, but it is about motor insurance in Ireland and a potential competition breach. We will cooperate with them and work closely with them. 

We understand that their case is about access to data effectively – so again, not directly about price – and whether there’s competition breaches about the incumbent companies controlling that data and not allowing new entrants in, while ours is about what we might call price signalling between insurance companies in Ireland. 

When they did their dawn raids on the insurance sector, we would have helped them out in terms of resources. So there’d be a lot of discussions about that. Similarly with mergers, the European Commission will take the big European mergers and there’s a kind of set formula, in terms of how many member states are affected and the size, that they will go to Europe.

The interesting thing there is the UK is now out of Europe. From 2021, when those calculations are done, obviously the UK won’t be in anymore. So bigger mergers that would previously have gone to Brussels because the UK market share was included will now come to us. In terms of Brexit, one of the issues that we have is we do expect bigger mergers that were previously going to Brussels to come to us.

“I don’t think any of us really know exactly how Brexit is going to go or the impact it’s going to have.”

TH: Do you expect the CCPC to grow in size as a result of Brexit? You said the caseload would increase, the new fining regime will  potentially bring more cases as well?

BMcH: Yes. The likes of Ryanair-Aer Lingus – something like that, which is very British-Irish in terms of where the markets are – is now more likely to come to us than go to Brussels, which just tend to be bigger, more interesting, more potentially problematic mergers, which will have an impact on the work that we do in terms of bigger cases taking more resources. 

We’ve previously engaged with our Department on resources for the potential increase in mergers and we’ve received extra resources for that, as well as on the product safety side, and that’s an ongoing kind of discussion, because I don’t think any of us really know exactly how Brexit is going to go or the impact it’s going to have.

With ECN+ we will have quite a number of new processes and procedures if we get the fining powers. There will have to be structural arrangements in place for a team to investigate and a team to make decisions on the fines. We will also have to run a leniency regime, so it will be quite a big impact. Again, we would engage quite closely with the department on that. 

The other good thing is that nearly every European competition body has these teams in place with the powers that we hope to get, so we can reference against them. We’d be quite small as a player in Europe at the moment in terms of resources, but we don’t have the powers others have.