In a consultation paper published this morning, the OFT called for the threshold by which takeovers or mergers are judged to be of “sufficient importance” to warrant an investigation to be raised to £10 million from the current £400,000 level. Nilam Statham, a partner at Finers Stephens Innocent, said the proposals were “a significant departure from the current guidance”.

“The new proposal is based on the premise that a ‘safe harbour’ of market size is not reflective of the complexities involved in assessing the importance of a particular market. The OFT proposes to adopt a more flexible approach on this assessment by introducing a qualitative approach to take into account other relevant factors .

“The challenge will be to ensure that the "judgement" based test is sufficiently certain to enable a sensible evaluation by merger parties and their advisers," Ms Statham said.