Monti to boost merger team

Date: 05/09/02

By Peter Chapman

COMPETITION Commissioner Mario Monti is recruiting a crack team of economic consultants to help his over-stretched department prepare key merger decisions.

Senior merger control official Francisco Enrique Gonzalez-Diaz said the economists - together with accounting and finance experts - would form a pool of external expertise.

'The assessment of merger cases is becoming increasingly complex, as reflected in the large number of cases in which the Commission conducts a more detailed investigation,' he said in a call to tender - a recruitment notice - published in the EU's Official Journal.

The experts could expect to be called in to analyse cases that warrant a four-month 'phase II' probe. They might also be asked to assess previous cases to help the Commission produce new guidelines on current policy for industry, he added.

The move coincides with plans by Monti's department to recruit an in-house chief economist, following criticism that it has been too reliant on the advice of lawyers with a tendency to cite obscure economic theories which have not always stood up.

The Commission - which faced a major challenge to its credibility in June after the European Court of First Instance overruled its 1999 decision to block the merger of UK tour operators Airtours and First Choice - denies this has led to poor policy-making decisions.

Nevertheless, Monti - himself an eminent economist - is now keen to give his profession a higher profile.

In a recent interview with European Voice, former DG Competition Director-General Alex Schaub said: 'There is a widespread conviction today - and that is also a deep change - that enforcement of European competition rules cannot be a matter for lawyers only.'

Schaub said IT experts were also needed to allow watchdogs to mine computerised files for damning business secrets, though he added that the final decision on recruitment would rest with his successor Philip Lowe and Monti.

Competition Commissioner Mario Monti is recruiting a crack team of economic consultants to help his over-stretched department prepare key merger decisions.