The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced the appointment of a team of experts in technological innovation, online competition, and tackling the dominance of powerful firms. This move is aimed at empowering the CMA to tackle problems in online markets more efficiently and ensure consumers benefit from free and fair competition.
The CMA is set to receive new powers from the UK government to enable it to tackle issues in online markets more rapidly. This will allow the CMA to set targeted rules that powerful firms must follow, rather than addressing issues after the damage has been done.
The experts advising the CMA are renowned in their fields and include Professor Annabelle Gawer, chaired Professor in Digital Economy and Director of the Centre of Digital Economy at Surrey Business School, University of Surrey. Also on the team is Professor Anja Lambrecht, Professor of Marketing at London Business School, Professor Neil Lawrence, DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge, and Senior AI Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute.
Geoffrey Myers, Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and former Director of Competition Economics at Ofcom is also on the team. Another expert is Mark Nottingham, an Internet standards expert and contributor to the Internet Engineering Task Force, and a member of the Board of Directors for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Principal of Jesus College, Oxford and Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, and Chair of the Open Data Institute, is also part of the team. Rod Sims AO, Professor at Crawford School of Public Policy, at the Australian National University and former Chair of The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), and Dina Srinivasan, a researcher and lawyer, and Fellow at Thurman Arnold Project, Yale University, are also part of the team.
Dr. Mahlet Zimeta, a data and technology policy expert and former Head of Public Policy at the Open Data Institute, and Senior Policy Adviser at the Royal Society, completes the team.
According to Will Hayter, Senior Director for the Digital Markets Unit at the CMA, the appointment of the experts is part of the CMA’s commitment to ensuring that UK consumers & businesses continue to enjoy the benefits of online innovation, which can only come from fair competition. He stated that the online world moves fast and that competition rules need to be responsive to future digital challenges. Hayter expressed his eagerness to work with the experts and the government to take action in digital markets and prepare for the new pro-competition regime.
Source: Gov[Dot]UK
