Eyes of the world

It wasn’t just the CMA watching this deal. When Tesco and Booker wanted to merge, the eyes of the press, politicians, and the public were firmly on this merger.

We needed to make the case to them all.

Check out the competition

Vertical integration doesn’t need to be a threat to competitiveness. But it needs a keen eye on the detail to explain why that is the case.

We started by unpicking the economics of vertical integration.  For the client, we could stress-test the rationale for the deal.

For the regulator, we developed a model they could use to conduct their own analysis of the vertical effects, breaking new theoretical ground in the process.

For both, we looked at the specific way the integrated company would work after the merger to show that what we had laid out in theory would in fact come to pass.

What you say and how you say it

The merger was passed by the CMA not just because they agreed with our analysis. It was the credibility and consistency that we had shown throughout the process that won the day and has set the benchmark for future cases of this type.