Competition bosses have warned allowing a delay into their investigation of the proposed Sainsbury’s-Asda merger would cause a “very serious risk” of not meeting the statutory timetable for the probe.
The Competition & Markets Authority’s response came after Sainsbury’s and Asda revealed today they would lodge an application to the Competition Appeal Tribunal for a judicial review of the timetable for the inquiry.
The supermarkets want the CMA to be forced to grant an additional 11 working days over the Christmas period to respond to the “huge amount” of material received from the authority as the result of its probe so far.
Some of the documents ran into “hundreds of pages” said a source, who added that sticking to the deadline could lead to the inquiry being rushed.
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However, the CMA said today it had already given several extensions to Sainsbury’s and Asda in their responses to the inquiry so far, and said it believed using up its one-off statutory power to extend the inquiry by up to eight weeks could prejudice the remainder of the probe.
It stressed it was determined to hit the statutory deadline of 5 March 2019 for a final decision on the case, though it still wanted to reserve the powers to delay that decision by up to two months.
“Our first priority in this investigation has, and will continue to be, assessing if shoppers would face higher prices or a lower quality of service as a result of the merger and, if so, to prevent that from happening,” a CMA spokeswoman said.
“We began to engage with the companies involved as soon as they announced their intention to merge at the end of April, to make sure they had the opportunity to fully put forward their views. Investigating any merger of this size requires assessing a large volume of material in a short timeframe, and it is not unusual for the companies involved to do this in the timelines we have been working to with Sainsbury’s and Asda.
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“We have done everything we can to aid their consideration of this work, whilst still ensuring we are able to meet our legally binding deadline. This includes extending certain administration timelines where appropriate.
“If we gave the companies the extra time they are now asking for, it would put our ability to complete the investigation by the required deadline at very serious risk. As with all of our merger reviews, we construct our timetable to ensure that everyone has the chance to have their say, including customers, the companies involved and suppliers.”
Sainsbury’s in particular pointed to a 2016 case in which the CMA gave itself eight more weeks to decide whether Lloyds Pharmacy would have to sell any branches for the deal to take over Sainsbury’s pharmacy business to go through.
The would-be merger partners said the current probe was a much bigger inquiry.
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