Latest news with #CompetitionAndMarketsAuthority
Times
13-05-2025
- Business
- Times
Vets competition inquiry ‘may drive takeovers of small practices'
The long-running competition investigation into the £5 billion-a-year veterinary services market could have the 'perverse effect' of hindering independent practices and hastening takeovers, according to an industry expert. Last month the Competition & Markets Authority outlined a series of possible remedies that it could enforce if its 18-month inquiry concludes that competition is not working well. The market investigation was launched following concerns including that pet owners may be overpaying for medicines and a lack of pricing and ownership transparency. It followed a rise in pet ownership since the pandemic and consolidation in the industry, led by private equity firms. An initial review of the market by the CMA prompted an 'unprecedented' 56,000 responses. In a recent call hosted by Jefferies, the investment bank,
Irish Times
13-05-2025
- Automotive
- Irish Times
EV Q&A: Why does our car not work with some chargers?
Q: While in Mallorca this summer, my husband was eager to hire an electric car (apart from it being cheaper than petrol alternatives). At the airport, we were upgraded to a Polestar 2 and headed off. The next day, my husband went off to try out charging/paying at charging points. We couldn't get any points to charge the car! After two days, we had to drive back across the island to the airport before the battery ran flat. The car hire company took the car, and went off to charge it, which failed as well. Not only did it fail, but every charging point it connected to was put out of service. My question is: why are the charging points not more resilient? The car hire company told me that more than 30 per cent of the charging infrastructure was down at any one time in Mallorca. – K Woollett, Co Dublin A: That 30 per cent of chargers being out of action at any one time is, worryingly, not an unrealistic figure. While most charging providers will claim to have at least 90 per cent reliability, figures from the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK show that anywhere between a tenth and a quarter of all public charging points are out of order at any given time, and that 30 per cent outages are far from uncommon. However, that wasn't really your question, your question was to do with specific cars and specific chargers. It should be simple, charging. After all, it's plugging an electrical device into a power source – something we do at home many times per day and something we've all been doing since Thomas Edison nicked Nikola Tesla's good ideas ... While the odd blown fuse might be excusable, the sad – and deeply irritating – fact is that plugging in an electric car just isn't so simple. READ MORE For a start, EVs work off at least a 400-volt, and increasingly an 800-volt system. That's a voltage that would be instantly lethal to you should anything go wrong and you came into direct contact with the current. So there are layers and layers of safety locks that have to be satisfied before current can start to flow, all the more necessary if it's raining (which, in fairness, I assume it wasn't in Mallorca…). So there are plenty of opportunities for software issues to arise simply by taking the safety locks into account. Your issue did seem to be very strange, though, so we contacted Polestar to see if they could shed any light on it. However, they couldn't – partly that was simply due to not being able to have access to the car and therefore not really being in a position to comment, and partly because they were working on the assumption that any issue with charging will be down to the charger, not the car, as car makers work hard to ensure that all cars are compatible with all chargers. That makes sense, of course, but perhaps it doesn't always work. On the one hand, the Polestar 2 uses well-proven battery and electronic systems from Volvo, which shouldn't present any problems. [ EV home charging pilot fails to address critical issue Opens in new window ] On the other, coming from a car-hire firm, perhaps this particular car hadn't been properly set up before it was released out into the car-hire wilds, and maybe that's the source of the issue. Or, it could be a proper mystery. For instance, we've been in contact with an EV owner in the UK, who has a home charger provided by PodPoint. In the past, this charger has worked flawlessly with a first-generation Mini E, a BMW iX3, and a Porsche Taycan. However, when this person purchased a new-shape Mini Electric, brought it home, and plugged it in ... nada, nothing, a big fat nope on the charging front. Cue a flurry of phone calls between the owner, Mini, and PodPoint which resulted in, as this person told us: 'A lot of shrugging emojis ...' It did seem to be a broader, known problem though, of this new generation of electric Mini simply not recognising a PodPoint charger, or vice versa. And this is not an isolated problem – PodPoint is one of the biggest charging suppliers in the UK. [ China's CATL says it has overtaken BYD on 5-minute EV battery charging time Opens in new window ] Finally, a month into ownership, a reflash of the software controlling the PodPoint charger did the job, and the Mini is now charging properly. The problem? No one seems to know why, so it's not clear if the problem has been permanently fixed or if it might recur. It gets dafter. Coming soon will be a new EV that will be entirely and deliberately incompatible with huge swathes of the charging network. Mercedes is about to launch its new, ultra-long-range CLA electric saloon , with an almost 800km range. That's some range, but don't expect to be able to top it up easily when you're out and about. Mercedes has designed the new CLA around an ultra-fast 800-volt charging system, which makes it ridiculously quick to charge. That's nothing new, as Audi, Porsche, Kia, and Hyundai have had 800-volt charging systems in some of their models for some time now. However, those Audi, Porsche, Kia, and Hyundai systems are back-compatible – in other words, if you plug them into a public charging point that works on a 400-volt system, and that's nearly all of them, then those cars can happily use 400-volt charging, they just won't charge up quite as quickly. Not so the new Mercedes. The company is already warning potential buyers that the CLA simply won't work with 400-volt chargers, and can only be charged either at home on a slow wallbox charger, or on a high-powered 800-volt public charger. That means most of the public chargers we have right now are going to be off-limits for the CLA. Remember when Apple ditched the headphone socket and made you buy Bluetooth buds? Yeah, like that only now you're stranded at the side of the road (to be fair, with an 800km range, that's unlikely unless you're very careless). I feel as if we haven't really answered your question, and to be honest it's because we actually can't. Electricity should be simple, well-understood tech, and for the most part it is. But there is a faint whiff of mystery when it comes to the electronics that control the flow of that electricity, and it can be moody and capricious stuff. Until that's better understood, there will be moments when any of us will pull up at a charging station and it simply won't work for us. And there will be no easily explicable reason for that.
Medscape
08-05-2025
- Business
- Medscape
UK Court Upholds Watchdog's Finding on Excessive NHS Thyroid Drug Prices
(Reuters) -The Court of Appeal has upheld a British watchdog's 99 million pound ($131.94 million) fine against owners of Advanz Pharma for overcharging the National Health Service for essential thyroid drug liothyronine, the watchdog said on Thursday. "In a unanimous judgment, the Court of Appeal has confirmed the Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) finding of excessive and unfair pricing in the supply of liothyronine tablets in the UK," the CMA said. ($1 = 0.7504 pounds) (Reporting by DhanushVignesh Babu in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur) Reuters Health Information © 2025 Reuters Ltd.
Reuters
08-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
UK court upholds watchdog's finding on excessive NHS thyroid drug prices
May 8 (Reuters) - The Court of Appeal has upheld a British watchdog's 99 million pound ($131.94 million) fine against owners of Advanz Pharma for overcharging the National Health Service for essential thyroid drug liothyronine, the watchdog said on Thursday. "In a unanimous judgment, the Court of Appeal has confirmed the Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) finding of excessive and unfair pricing in the supply of liothyronine tablets in the UK," the CMA said. ($1 = 0.7504 pounds)
Daily Mail
07-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Trainline takes 'assertive stance' over plans for state-backed rival
Trainline is taking an 'increasingly assertive stance' with the UK Government over plans to revamp the rail ticket sector. The Department of Transport announced proposals in January to set up a new state-backed retail platform aimed at modernising Britain's complex rail ticketing system. It intends to launch the retailer once it has also established Great British Railways (GBR), a new body that will operate rail transport. Trainline investors are concerned that the state-backed retailer will eat into the group's dominance of its domestic market. The firm told shareholders on Wednesday it was 'taking an increasingly assertive stance with the Government to deliver on its commitment to deliver a fair, open and competitive future retail market'. It said: 'The Government was unequivocal in its commitment to a fair, open and competitive rail retail market, recognising the fundamental role that independent retailers play in driving innovation and attracting more customers to the railway. Trainline has made its case 'strongly' in response submitted official consultation on the future market and it is also 'actively challenging where operators' self-preference their own channels today', it added. Trainline said: 'At the highest level the company expects level playing field safeguards for independent retailers. 'Such safeguards, as recently supported by the [Competition and Markets Authority], are typically seen in other regulated markets in the UK, including the telecoms, water and energy sectors.' It came as Britain's biggest train ticketing business also reported its operating profits jumped by £30million to £86million in the year ending February, as net ticket sales expanded by 12 per cent to a record £5.9billion. The group told shareholders that growth reflected domestic demand benefiting from fewer strikes and an industry fare hike. Trainline also said growth reflected the shift towards digital bookings, which represented 52 per cent of consumer ticket purchases in the UK, up five percentage points year-on-year. At the same time, ticket sales in the firm's business-to-business arm climbed by a fifth to £941million, thanks partly to strong white-label carrier sales. Consequently, total revenue increased by 12 per cent to £442million, with a further boost provided by insurance and hotel bookings through the company's website. And gross profits rose by 15 per cent to £352million following a cut in the fulfilment fees that Trainline pays to the railway sector when a customer buys a barcode ticket. Jody Ford, chief executive of Trainline, said: 'Our sustained investment in tech innovation over the last three decades is delivering for customers, driving industry growth and is reflected in our performance. 'Looking ahead, liberalised routes across Europe will be worth €12billion by 2030, almost three times their size today.' Ford pointed to Spain as a 'blueprint for Europe'; Trainline has taken advantage of a rise in the number of the country's high-speed carrier brands to nearly triple its ticket sales there in the past two years. Carrier competition is further anticipated to develop in France and Italy in the coming years on routes set to generate a combined €9.7billion of passenger revenue by 2030. Yet Trainline warned of a potential hit to trade this year from global macroeconomic uncertainty, Transport for London's expansion of its contactless travel zone, and Google's changes to its search engine results page. As a result, Trainline shares slumped by 7.6 per cent down to 258.6p on Wednesday morning, taking their losses to around 37 per cent since the year started. Analysts at Shore Capital said: 'TRN's equity continues to price in bad news in our view. 'This is despite the Group remaining well-positioned to scale alongside the new entrant carrier competition and the B2B opportunity both in the UK and Europe.'
