WIREDGOV

The Competition Commission (CC) and the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) have yesterday launched a joint consultation on a good practice guide for parties presenting evidence in merger inquiries.

The draft guide provides advice on how to design and present consumer survey evidence. It sets out several principles of good survey design and details a range of practices that will tend to increase the evidential weight that can be given to survey results.
The consultation is particularly seeking responses from parties that are likely to advise those involved in merger inquiries, such as legal firms, management consultancies, economic consultancies and market research agencies.

Steve Brown, the OFT’s Head of Statistics and secretary of the joint OFT/CC drafting group, said:
Submissions derived from consumer surveys can form an important part of the evidence in a merger investigation. The final guide will ensure that parties who wish to provide survey evidence have as much practical assistance from the CC and OFT as possible.
Interested parties are requested to give their views on the draft guidance, which can be found here, by 3 September 2010. The final guide is expected to be published in the autumn of this year.

Notes

1. The consultation document is available from the OFT website
www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/consultations/OFT1230con.pdf as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file (about 200 KB). The document is also available on the CC website.

2. Comments on the good practice guide should be sent to: Steve Brown, Head of Statistics, The Office of Fair Trading, Fleetbank House, 2–6 Salisbury Square, London EC4Y 8JX or by email.

3. The deadline for submissions is 3 September 2010.

4. Enquiries should be directed to Rory Taylor at the CC on 020 7271 0242 or Pritie Billimoria at the OFT on 020 7211 8708.