Showing posts with label Competition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Competition. Show all posts
Healthy Eating
Almond milk, e-cigarettes and avocados enjoyed the biggest surge in demand among UK shoppers last year, as a trend toward healthy eating gathered pace, according to one research firm.
Figures from data provider IRI, which specialises in helping retailers to understand consumer demand, £62m was spent on almond milk in 2016, a 32 per cent increase on the previous year.
Sales of e-cigarettes rose by 30.1 per cent to £81m and sales of avocado added 28.3 per cent to a whopping £187m.
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Figures from data provider IRI, which specialises in helping retailers to understand consumer demand, £62m was spent on almond milk in 2016, a 32 per cent increase on the previous year.
Sales of e-cigarettes rose by 30.1 per cent to £81m and sales of avocado added 28.3 per cent to a whopping £187m.
Read more
Marmite-gate?
Shares in Unilever fell on Thursday morning after the consumer good giant at the centre of Marmitegate warned that tough market conditions are “likely to continue” next year as it revealed lower than expected results on Thursday.
Shares in the company fell more than 4 per cent in early trading in London after the maker of Knorr soup and Dove shampoo said underlying revenue growth was 2.2 per cent in the three months ending in December compared to the 2.8 per cent expected by analysts in a Thomson Reuters poll.
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Shares in the company fell more than 4 per cent in early trading in London after the maker of Knorr soup and Dove shampoo said underlying revenue growth was 2.2 per cent in the three months ending in December compared to the 2.8 per cent expected by analysts in a Thomson Reuters poll.
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Mark Carney: internet-only lenders pose risk to UK financial system
The Bank of England
governor has warned that a new breed of internet-only lenders are
beginning to pose risks to the financial system and without tighter
regulation they could trigger the next financial crash.
Mark Carney said high street banks were being displaced by online lenders that were untested in a recession, when bankruptcies might make their loans worthless.
Cyber-attacks could also strip customers of digital money, leaving them to face huge losses without the traditional protection offered by regulators, he said.
The warning follows a speech last year by Adair Turner, the former chief financial regulator, who said losses on loans made over the internet could make the worst bankers look like “lending geniuses”.
Speaking at a conference in Germany, Carney said digital money held out the prospect of allowing millions of people excluded from the mainstream banking system to access loans securely.
Threadneedle Street has several initiatives under way to allow peer-to-peer online lenders access to central bank funds and facilitate transactions.
But he expected the authorities “to pursue a more intense focus” on financial regulations, lending rules “and a more disciplined management of operational and cyber risks” as the price of the industry’s growing influence.
In the UK, about 14% of new lending last year to small and medium-sized businesses was by so-called fintech lenders, which typically offer loans with funds provided directly by investors.
He likened the growth in recent months to the explosion in securitised loans used by banks such as Northern Rock before the 2008 financial crash.
“It is not clear the extent to which P2P lending can grow without business models evolving in ways that introduce conventional risks. Were these changes to occur, regulators would be expected to address such emerging vulnerabilities,” he said.
The UK is expected to become a global leader in online lending, putting pressure on the Bank to adopt regulations that protect customers without stifling a still young industry.
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Mark Carney said high street banks were being displaced by online lenders that were untested in a recession, when bankruptcies might make their loans worthless.
Cyber-attacks could also strip customers of digital money, leaving them to face huge losses without the traditional protection offered by regulators, he said.
The warning follows a speech last year by Adair Turner, the former chief financial regulator, who said losses on loans made over the internet could make the worst bankers look like “lending geniuses”.
Speaking at a conference in Germany, Carney said digital money held out the prospect of allowing millions of people excluded from the mainstream banking system to access loans securely.
Threadneedle Street has several initiatives under way to allow peer-to-peer online lenders access to central bank funds and facilitate transactions.
But he expected the authorities “to pursue a more intense focus” on financial regulations, lending rules “and a more disciplined management of operational and cyber risks” as the price of the industry’s growing influence.
In the UK, about 14% of new lending last year to small and medium-sized businesses was by so-called fintech lenders, which typically offer loans with funds provided directly by investors.
He likened the growth in recent months to the explosion in securitised loans used by banks such as Northern Rock before the 2008 financial crash.
“It is not clear the extent to which P2P lending can grow without business models evolving in ways that introduce conventional risks. Were these changes to occur, regulators would be expected to address such emerging vulnerabilities,” he said.
The UK is expected to become a global leader in online lending, putting pressure on the Bank to adopt regulations that protect customers without stifling a still young industry.
Read more
Competition and Markets Authority
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is a non-ministerial government department in the United Kingdom, responsible for strengthening business competition and preventing and reducing anti-competitive activities. The CMA launched in shadow form on October 1, 2013 and began operating fully on April 1, 2014, when it assumed many of the functions of the previously existing Competition Commission and Office of Fair Trading, which were abolished.
In situations where competition could be unfair or consumer choice may be affected, the CMA is responsible for:[8]
Responsibilities
- investigating mergers
- conducting market studies
- investigating possible breaches of prohibitions against anti-competitive agreements under the Competition Act 1998
- bringing criminal proceedings against individuals who commit cartels offences
- enforcing consumer protection legislation, particularly the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Directive and Regulations
- encouraging regulators to use their competition powers
- considering regulatory references and appeals
- Monitoring and regulating prices: Regulators aim to ensure that companies do not exploit their monopoly power by charging excessive prices. They look at evidence of pricing behaviour and also the rates of return on capital employed to see if there is evidence of 'profiteering.' For example, recently the EU Competition Commission has enforced a number of cuts in the charges that can be made by mobile phone businesses when customers travel overseas. When setting price caps, regulators need to decide how much profit companies should be allowed to earn in exchange for the risks they are asked to take.
- Standards of customer service: Companies that fail to meet specified service standards can be fined or have their franchise / license taken away. The regulator may also require that unprofitable services are maintained in the wider public interest e.g. BT keeping phone booths open in rural areas and inner cities; the Royal Mail is still required by law to provide a uniform delivery service at least once a day to all postal addresses in the UK
- Opening up markets: The aim here is to encourage competition by removing or lowering barriers to entry. This might be achieved by forcing the dominant firm in the industry to allow others to use its infrastructure network. A key task for the regulator is to fix a fair access price for firms wanting to use the existing infrastructure. Fair both to the existing firms and also potential challengers. A good example to use here is the attempt in the UK to introduce more competition into the banking industry by encouraging the entry of challenger banks to compete against the large established commercial banking businesses.
- The "Surrogate Competitor": Regulation can act as a form of surrogate competition – attempting to ensure that prices, profits and service quality are similar to what could be achieved in competitive markets. Fear of action by OFT and other regulators may prevent anticompetitive behaviour (i.e. there will be a deterrent effect)
Protecting the public interest
The key role of competition authorities around the world including the European Union is to protect the public interest, particularly against firms abusing their dominant positions
A firm holds a dominant position if its power enables it to operate within the market without taking account of the reaction of its competitors or of intermediate or final consumers.
An example of this happened in the summer of 2014 when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recommended a full competition inquiry into UK retail banks claiming that the market for current accounts was not sufficiently competitive to work in the consumers' interest.
The key role of competition authorities around the world including the European Union is to protect the public interest, particularly against firms abusing their dominant positions
A firm holds a dominant position if its power enables it to operate within the market without taking account of the reaction of its competitors or of intermediate or final consumers.
An example of this happened in the summer of 2014 when the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recommended a full competition inquiry into UK retail banks claiming that the market for current accounts was not sufficiently competitive to work in the consumers' interest.
Recent news....
The competition watchdog has raised concerns that a takeover of a payments system by Mastercard could have an impact on the Link cash machine network.
The Competition and Markets Authority has given Mastercard a week to tackle its concerns that its takeover of Vocalink will restrict the number of companies able to provide systems to Link, which operates more than 70,000 automatic teller machines (ATMs) around the UK.
Andrea Coscelli, acting chief executive of the CMA, said: “The Link ATM network provides an essential service for millions of customers. It’s important that Link has a good choice of providers when it comes to supplying the necessary infrastructure so it can take advantage of the opening up of payment systems to competition.
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