The number of whistleblowing reports to the UK’s competition regulator last year rose to its highest ever level, indicating that new protections are working, reported the Financial Times.
Calls to the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) cartels hotline rose 18% per cent in 2018 to 556, up from 471 the previous year, according to data obtained by Thomson Reuters. That is more than two and a half times the number reported in 2014, the year the CMA began operating after the merger of the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading.
Cartels occur when businesses strike illegal deals not to compete with each other, such as by fixing prices and discounts, agreeing on which customers and areas to supply, limiting the production or supply of a product to drive up prices, or rigging contract bids.
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