DT Economics turned ten this year, and we marked it with a weekend away day at Muncaster Castle, on the Cumbrian coast. Partners, the team and some of our Senior Advisors were there, and we invited families along too, babies and toddlers included. Ten years ago, David Thomas started the firm with a simple conviction: that it should be possible to build a specialist economics practice without the backing of a global giant behind it, and that a smaller firm could still do work

I have sat on the CMA panel for nine energy licence modification appeals and five water redeterminations. The government's new consultation would end that version of the process. The legal test barely changes in most sectors. What changes is the prize. Win an appeal today and a company can walk away with a different number. Win under the proposed regime and you get sent back to the regulator to start over. For water, energy and aviation companies, that difference matters more

Every four years, and especially in the week before the World Cup final on Sunday, football is about as close as the world gets to a single global product. Billions of viewers, very large broadcasting revenues, and a tournament owned and commercialised by a governing body with considerable influence over the structure of the sport. After three decades in telecoms regulation, I find it an interesting thought experiment to ask what a familiar regulatory toolkit - market definit