CMA invites comments on Greene King pub sales
The CMA has opened a consultation on proposals offered by Greene King to address competition concerns relating to its purchase of another pub group.
Greene King offered the undertaking after the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition from its proposed acquisition of the Spirit Pub Company. In order to address this, Greene King offered to divest pubs in the 16 areas that caused concern.
On 26 May, the CMA announced that it would look in detail at the undertaking offered by Greene King and is minded to accept the proposal. It has until 21 July 2015 to consider whether to accept the undertaking, or a modified version of it, and as part of this process it is now consulting publicly on whether the proposed undertaking is sufficient to address the competition concerns.
Before reaching a final decision, the CMA is therefore inviting interested parties to make their views known. The deadline for responses is 18 June 2015.
The consultation on the undertaking and all other information relating to this merger investigation can be found on the case page.
The pubs proposed for sale are set out in .
Notes for editors
- The CMA is the UK’s primary competition and consumer authority. It is an independent non-ministerial government department with responsibility for carrying out investigations into mergers, markets and the regulated industries and enforcing competition and consumer law. From 1 April 2014 it took over the functions of the Competition Commission and the competition and certain consumer functions of the Office of Fair Trading, as amended by the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013.
- For more information on the CMA see our homepage, or follow us on Twitter @CMAgovuk, Flickr and LinkedIn. Sign up to our email alerts to receive updates on merger cases.
- Enquiries should be directed Simon Belgard (simon.belgard@cma.gsi.gov.uk, 020 3738 6472).