Look around any international conference today and a good share of the room will be online on a travel eSIM. That was certainly true at the International Institute of Communications (IIC) Annual Conference in Kuala Lumpur last month, where I joined Graeme Di Rollo, Senior Legal Counsel at Airalo for a fireside chat on a question regulators across the world are now grappling with: how should a product that is global by design be regulated by authorities that are, by definition

I sat on the CMA panel that required Ecolab to sell Holchem in 2019, a case in which the parties put forward an efficiency claim with a figure attached but very little evidence behind it.[1] The rules on how competition authorities treat claims of this kind have now changed on both sides of the Channel. The test itself has moved very little, but the authorities are saying more openly that they will listen, which puts more weight than ever on whether parties can evidence what

Ofcom is shifting the goal of connectivity policy from coverage to quality, betting that transparency will push operators to improve. But do consumers reward quality? The evidence on switching is mixed. Speaking at Connected Britain on 9 September, Ofcom's Natalie Black set out the shift in plain terms: “Coverage on a map is not the same as a connection people can count on,” and “nobody cares how many bars they have if their video call freezes. They care whether it works.”[1]

Third in a series on the reform of water regulatory appeals, following "Regulatory appeals are moving from the CMA to the CAT"[1] and "Regulatory appeals and the resourcing gap: who can afford to be heard?"[2] PR24, the 2024 price review, sets price controls for AMP8, the current five-year period running from April 2025 to March 2030; the next review, PR29, is due in 2029 and takes effect from 2030. But a price control has never been entirely fixed for the full five years. Of

Appeal rights mean little if only one side can afford to use them properly. This piece looks at what that gap actually costs, and what could close it. Our previous piece[1] looked at the Department for Business and Trade's (DBT) proposal[2] to move regulatory appeals from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), and what the harmonised right of appeal would mean across water, energy, aviation and telecoms. That piece focused on pro

How a distant weather cycle is quietly reshaping collateral, affordability and dispute risk across UK and EU lending books An El Niño event has been building in the tropical Pacific since June. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center currently puts the odds at around six in ten that this event will peak at a magnitude matching the strongest on record. Although the United Kingdom and the European Union sit thousands of miles from the ocean anomalies that define the phenomenon, the co

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

Crypto has had no shortage of turning points, but the one now unfolding has a different character. It lacks the drama of the boom-and-bust cycles that tend to dominate the headlines, and that quietness is precisely why it matters. Stablecoins have travelled from the margins of digital finance to the heart of global payment flows, and they have arrived well ahead of the rules meant to govern them.

Crypto has had no shortage of turning points, but the one now unfolding has a different character. It lacks the drama of the boom-and-bust cycles that tend to dominate the headlines, and that quietness is precisely why it matters. Stablecoins have travelled from the margins of digital finance to the heart of global payment flows, and they have arrived well ahead of the rules meant to govern them.

Every June, professional services firms publish their commitments to inclusion. The language is warm, the intentions are genuine, and the programmes are often impressive - mentoring schemes, employee networks, unconscious bias training, diversity targets with board-level accountability. Large firms have the infrastructure to do this well, and many do. Inclusion means different things in different contexts. June is the month when that conversation is most alive - and when it

The EU’s steel trade regime has changed substantially. The EU Council formally approved a new Regulation (Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council addressing the negative trade-related effects of global overcapacity on the Union steel market) addressing the negative trade-related effects of global overcapacity on the Union steel market on 8 June 2026. It replaces the temporary safeguard measures expiring on 30 June 2026, with a permanent framework taking effec

The crypto industry has moved past the stage where legal uncertainty was an excuse for inaction. Courts are treating crypto assets as property. Regulators in major jurisdictions are writing rules. Institutional money is involved. The question for businesses operating in this space is no longer whether regulation will come, but what the economic consequences of fragmented and competing regulatory frameworks will be, and where the disputes will follow.

Returning from maternity leave is, for most professionals, framed primarily as a process of catching up: re-engaging with clients, re-establishing presence, closing the gap that absence creates. That framing is understandable, and the practical reality of re-entry is real. But it captures only part of the picture. This piece reflects on a different dimension of the return: the capabilities that the experience of parenthood can sharpen, and what those capabilities mean in a

The CAA is about to acquire powers it has never had. Businesses in regulated sectors need to understand what changes when a regulator stops asking courts for help and starts acting itself. For most of its existence, the Civil Aviation Authority has been a regulator that could advise, cajole, refer and complain - but not directly punish. When airlines fell short of their obligations to passengers, the CAA's route to enforcement ran through the courts. It was slow, uncertain, a

Insights The EU Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) is a Commission proposal published in March 2026, establishing a framework to accelerate industrial capacity and decarbonisation in strategic sectors. Its headline ambition is to restore manufacturing's share of EU GDP to 20% by 2035. The Act integrates industrial policy, climate ambition and economic-security tools into a single regulatory package - the most comprehensive intervention in EU industrial policy since the Single

After seven years as a member of the Civil Aviation Authority's Consumer Panel, my appointment came to an end in March 2026. The Consumer Panel is an independent body that acts as a critical friend to the CAA, advising on matters affecting aviation consumers. Its work spans airline insolvency and passenger rights, airport economic regulation, accessibility, and the development of price control frameworks for Heathrow and NATS. The breadth is wider than it might sound - over s

My appointment as a specialist panel member at the Competition and Markets Authority came to an end this month with the publication of the PR24 water redeterminations. I joined the panel in October 2017. My eight-year term expired in October 2025, but was extended to allow me to complete the PR24 process - something I was glad to do. The CMA panel is an unusual institution. It sits at arm's length from the CMA's executive, convened case by case to make final decisions in Phas

The Government's consultation on changes to the UK competition regime closed on 31 March 2026. The centrepiece of the proposal - the replacement of the CMA's independent panel with a Board sub-committee - would, if implemented, represent the most significant structural reform of the CMA since its establishment. Having left the panel last month after eight years as a specialist member, I want to say something about what is actually at stake. The current system keeps a structur

Small nation regulators face a distinctive set of pressures that rarely feature in mainstream regulatory economics literature. The frameworks developed by Ofcom, the FCA or the European Commission assume deep specialist capacity, stable long-term funding and a regulator that can afford, when necessary, to go to court. For the national regulatory authorities (NRAs) of small nations such as Jersey, the Cayman Islands, Mauritius or Trinidad and Tobago, none of those assumptions