The Competition & Growth Conference

In January 2025, the UK government replaced the chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), signaling a shift toward a more growth-oriented competition policy. This move, part of Labour’s broader economic agenda, has sparked intense debate about how competition enforcement can coexist with fostering innovation and growth, particularly in transformative sectors like artificial intelligence (AI) and digital markets.

The conference, “Competition & Growth: Unleashing Prosperity”, organized by The George Washington University and hosted in London at the University of East London, brought together leading competition regulators, enforcers, antitrust scholars, practitioners, and in-house counsels to address this critical challenge.

The conference aimed to explore how competition authorities can promote fair markets while supporting economic dynamism in an interconnected, AI-driven world.

We examined the evolving role of competition policy in supporting industrial strategies, facilitating mergers that drive growth, and regulating rapidly evolving digital markets. Conference participants included leading regulators, in-house counsels, and practitioners in the United Kingdom. The conference was a unique opportunity to engage with key stakeholders at a critical time for the development of competition rules in the United Kingdom.