Competition Commission head slams 'perverse' BAA decision
03.05.10
A ruling that has allowed BAA to maintain its near-monopoly in the south-east and Scotland is ‘perverse, wasteful and wrong’, the head of the UK competition watchdog told the FT. Peter Freeman, chairman of the Competition Commission, said he would fight to reverse a tribunal judgment that blocked an order for the UK airports operator to sell Stansted and either Glasgow or Edinburgh airports (in addition to Gatwick) because its dominance harmed passengers' interests.
Mr Freeman is pushing through a counter-appeal against the Competition Appeal Tribunal's ruling this year negating the Commission's two-year BAA probe because of the ‘apparent bias’ in links between an investigator and a local authority pension fund that bid unsuccessfully for Gatwick. He said: ‘We did not agree [that there was apparent bias] and particularly do not agree [it] should cause an entire market investigation to be done again. That seems an outcome that is perverse, wasteful and wrong.’
Having sold Gatwick at around half early estimates of its value before the banking crisis and recession, BAA is likely to be looking to delay the forced sale more airports, although the company is reported to be open to selling both Stansted and Glasgow when market conditions have recovered, in order to help pay down its massive debt pile.
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