Shake-up to ‘drive growth and investment’ follows ministers’ calls for a more business-friendly regime

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The UK’s competition regulator has pledged to “drive growth and investment” and speed up its decisions after pressure from the government to be more pragmatic and less risk averse in its investigations.

Setting out how she planned to overhaul the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the regulator’s chief executive, Sarah Cardell, said a change of strategic direction was needed after the “operating environment” had changed.