Open, Advisory and Warning Letters

We send open letters to:

• respond to concerns or information which raises concern about competition in a particular market or sector; and/or
• raise awareness of the competition law and remind market participants of their obligations.

If you receive an open letter from us, we have sent similar letters to different businesses operating in the same market sector.

An open letter does not allege a breach of competition law nor do we request a response to it. However, we do encourage market participants and/or members of the public who may have concerns or information about past, current or potential anti-competitive behaviour in the market to come forward.

Open letters are published on the published on the Authority’s website (see below) and may be accompanied by press release.

We have no legal power to make you respond to a warning or advisory letter. However, the next steps we will take are likely to depend, in part, on your response to our letter - so please consider your response carefully.

Remember that, while your matter is not a current priority for investigation, we may decide to investigate at a later date. We may look again at your case if we receive more evidence or if our priorities change. If we then find that you’ve broken the competition law, you may face a higher financial penalty if you didn’t act on our letter.

The main steps we recommend you take to cooperate with us effectively are set out below:

• Escalate the matter within your business: share and discuss our letter with your senior managers or board of directors.
• Consider getting legal advice: you may wish to speak to a legal adviser about the concerns raised.
• Acknowledge receipt: an advisory letter will request or acknowledge receipt of the letter and confirm your understanding.
• Assess your compliance: a warning letter will request you to consider the points guidance in our letter, review your business practices and determine whether you are complaint with the competition law.
• Respond on time: Failure to respond as requested, or at all, by the deadline will give cause for us to consider investigation of the matter.
• Request a meeting: should it be helpful at any point during the above process, we are available to meet. Please let us know if you wish to discuss the content of the letter received.

We operate a leniency policy for businesses willing to end their participation in a cartel.

Cartels involve two or more businesses agreeing to act together to restrict or limit competition rather than compete independently. Cartels are a particularly damaging form of anti-competitive behaviour due to the serious damage they can cause to consumers, businesses and the economy. 

If a business ends its participation in a cartel and reports it to us, it may benefit from full immunity from, or a significant reduction of, any financial penalty that the Authority could impose for breaches of competition law.

The Authority's leniency policy helps us detect and take action against cartels: see Guideline 11 - Leniency Policy.