Well, maybe not. Even former executives of the gasoline retail game say privately that competitive tensions in the market are less than intense. In previous episodes when pump prices were headlines, supermarkets, which collectively account for half of the market, reacted with “spend £ 50 in the store and save 10 euros per liter when full” offers. Offers are never as generous as they sound (supermarket numbers are carefully calibrated) but they do affect prices to some degree. Such activity this time was virtually absent. The crucial player in the fuel market, in the sense that it is the most aggressive in terms of price, has traditionally been Asda. There is evidence in the CMA report that prevented Sainsbury’s and Asda from merging in 2019. “Third parties told us that Asda was the price leader and often the first to reduce prices among the big retail supermarkets,” he said. Is Asda – now partly owned by the Issa brothers, who also own EG Group – less willing to start a mini-price war on fuel? Well, if so, the CMA would be in a bad position to grumble: the Asda market was canceled after only 27 EG service stations out of a total of 700 were canceled. But the question may still be worth exploring. And is Morrisons’ appetite for a fuel race diminished by the fact that he now owns an American private equity firm that took on a mountain of debt to make the deal? As for Tesco, it is gaining a stake in food, so there may not be an urgent commercial incentive to break the fuel economy. And Sainsbury’s, No. 2 in the market, is never likely to lead. The suspicion, in other words, is not that they have not passed the 5p-a-liter of the government. Rather, it is that supermarkets have allowed their fuel cash margins – traditionally 5 p / a-liter or so – to fluctuate slightly higher as they fight the undeniable inflationary pressure on profits in their core food business. An innocent case of swings and roundabouts, as companies can see it. It is difficult to be definitive without the detailed information that only the CMA can require. In Kwarteng shoes, however, the issue needs to be looked at. Supermarkets never say much about their fuel profits. It is not bad to impose a little more transparency.
Railway bids from abroad may proceed
At this rate, the arrival of the Great British Railways as a supervisory regulator will be accompanied by a large outflow of British companies on the railways. Go-Ahead, which manages the Thameslink and Southern franchises, is the latest to attract interest in the offers, and the prospective owners are inevitably from abroad. An offer of £ 15 per share, or £ 648 million, comes from a consortium of Kinetic, an Australian company, and Globalvia Inversiones, of Spain. Go-Ahead’s board recommends it – no surprise, as the share price had fallen as much as 600p earlier this year when the group was removed from its Southeast franchise following an accounting scandal. FirstGroup, meanwhile – which includes the West Coast Avanti, the Great Western Railway, the South Western Railway and the TransPennine Express – is the only other major rail operator in the United Kingdom. He is in the process of trying to repel the interest of an American private equity firm, a story that may not be over yet. Interest in the Go-Ahead, it must be said, is probably mainly driven by the bus business in London, which is making more money. But this shows a parallel development in the UK bus industry, where Stagecoach is taken over by a German infrastructure fund. From a passenger point of view, the quality of services is probably more important than the property. However, in the midst of the ongoing debate over “shifts” and the revival of public transport (despite the strikes), it is disappointing that the British rail carrier could soon be the main operator of DfT OLR Holdings. coast and the northern railway. Remember, it is the public body that picks up the pieces when private sector businesses fail. Three decades after the privatization of the railways, it would not be too much to shout.
