Competition and Markets Authority - "Concentration" Activity

It has been announced today that the Competition and Markets Authority have agreed, in principle, to allow the takeover of wholesaler Booker by the retail giant Tesco. Although agreeing in principle, the CMA have reserved the right to continue to examine the takeover to ensure that ongoing negotiations do not have a detrimental impact on levels of competition to the point of reducing choice or increasing prices for consumers.

You may be interested in using the activity here as a way of continuing discussions in class about the role of the CMA and examples of cases that they have recently been involved with.

The 'Concentration' activity has two parts - one asking players to match businesses involved in ongoing CMA cases (including Tesco and Booker) and another involving recently closed cases.

After seeing the examples of cases, you might like to ask which are examples of horizontal and vertical integration or which might have more of an impact on levels of competition within the individual markets and why.