Former Amazon boss to keep CMA chair

Britain's competition watchdog has undergone the most dramatic transformation in a decade, and the numbers tell a stark story. The Competition and Markets Authority approved every single merger that crossed its desk in 2025—36 deals cleared, zero blocked. Now the architect of that shift, former Amazon executive Doug Gurr, has been confirmed for a full five-year term that will cement this new era of light-touch enforcement through 2030.

Gurr was installed on an interim basis in January 2025 after his predecessor was pushed out by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who made no attempt to disguise her reasoning. The previous regime, she explained bluntly, didn't align with Labour's growth agenda. What's being presented as modernisation looks rather more like systematic weakening of merger enforcement.

From Watchdog to Lapdog

The contrast with the previous regime could hardly be starker. Under Marcus Bokkerink, the CMA launched an aggressive investigation into Microsoft's £55bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023, forcing substantial concessions before approval. That kind of muscular enforcement now appears to belong to a different era entirely.

Business Secretary Peter Kyle's statement confirming Gurr's appointment maintains the government's framing, declaring it signals the UK is a place where businesses can "grow and invest with confidence". The Department for Business praised Gurr for "improving the pace, predictability, proportionality and process" of merger investigations during his first year.

Strip away the positive spin, and that's a celebration of faster approvals. Pace means quicker clearances. Predictability means companies know they're unlikely to face serious resistance.

When a regulator stops blocking anything at all, it's either because every proposed merger suddenly became benign, or because the criteria for intervention have shifted fundamentally.

Competition authorities exist precisely to intervene when markets fail, blocking deals that would harm consumers through reduced choice or higher prices. The broader question is whether this represents sensible recalibration or regulatory capture.

The Amazon Elephant in the Room

Gurr's background makes this shift particularly notable. He ran Amazon's UK operations from 2016 to 2020, having joined the tech giant in 2011. Before that, he worked at McKinsey and Asda. This is someone who has spent his career either inside major corporations or advising them.

That creates obvious questions when the CMA now holds significant powers over digital markets regulation, with big tech firms including Amazon squarely in its remit. The potential for conflict—or at minimum, the appearance of it—is substantial. Can someone who recently led Amazon UK robustly regulate Amazon?

MPs on the business select committee will have an opportunity to question Gurr in coming weeks, though they lack the power to veto his appointment. That scrutiny matters. Competition policy isn't some technical backwater; it determines whether markets work for consumers or consolidate into oligopolies that extract rents whilst stifling innovation.

Political Interference by Another Name

What's perhaps most striking is how openly the government has orchestrated this transformation. Independent regulators are meant to operate at arm's length from political direction precisely to prevent the kind of pressure that leads to light-touch enforcement when ministers want to show they're "business-friendly".

Other jurisdictions maintain clearer boundaries. The United States Federal Trade Commission, for all its flaws, doesn't see chairs summarily removed because the Treasury Secretary prefers a different approach. The European Commission's competition directorate operates under legal frameworks that insulate it from national political interference.

Reeves's ousting of Bokkerink and installation of Gurr represents something closer to direct political control dressed up as appointments procedure.

The "different approach" she cited wasn't about competence or management—it was explicitly about policy direction. That sets a troubling precedent for regulatory independence across government.

What Happens When the Watchdog Stops Watching

The counter-argument runs that Britain's competition regime had become too aggressive, deterring investment and slowing deal-making that could generate growth. Some corporate lawyers have indeed criticised the CMA for mission creep and lengthy investigations that impose costs on businesses.

But the appropriate response to over-reach isn't to swing to the opposite extreme. Zero blocked mergers in a year doesn't suggest careful proportionality; it suggests a regulator that's stopped seriously scrutinising transactions. Markets naturally tend towards concentration without effective enforcement.

Large firms acquire potential competitors. Dominant players leverage their position into adjacent sectors. Consumers end up with fewer choices and higher prices.

Gurr himself said he sees "a clear contribution we can make here through promoting competition and protecting consumers". The test of that claim won't be how many deals get waved through, but whether the CMA is willing to block the transactions that genuinely threaten competition. Based on the evidence so far, that willingness appears to have evaporated entirely.

The five-year term ahead will reveal whether 2025 was an anomaly or the new normal. If the CMA continues approving virtually everything that crosses its desk under Gurr's permanent leadership, Britain will have effectively abandoned meaningful merger control—a deregulatory experiment whose costs won't become apparent until market concentration has already done its damage.