The UK supermarket giant Tesco is gearing up to defend its corner in the inquiry into the retail sector by the Competition Commission (CC).
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The supermarket operator is to publish today (2 April) a 28-page response to the investigation, in which it will criticise attempts by the Competition Commission to establish whether it has dominance in specific UK towns and cities, according to a report by Sunday newspaper The Observer.
Tesco will say: “It is not credible … to suggest that a grocery retailer could become so entrenched in a local area as to make that area incontestable by others,” it was reported.
In January, the Competition Commission found few problems with retailer-supplier relationships in its emerging thinking document following the first stage of its investigation. But the next stage was to focus on local markets across the UK.
Peter Freeman, chairman of the CC and Inquiry Group, said in January: “We have now gathered a large amount of evidence about the overall picture in this market, and having gathered this information, we can now look in detail at the situation locally.
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By GlobalData“We are not here to punish success or individual retailers but we are concerned with whether Tesco, or any other supermarket, can get into such a strong position, either nationally or locally, that no other retailer can compete effectively.”
But Tesco has questioned the commission’s decision to go down the local route as a way of effectively assessing competition.
