The Office of Fair Trading has cleared Tesco’s acquisition of 21 former BP/Safeway forecourts from Morrisons.

The Office of Fair Trading has cleared Tesco’s acquisition of 21 former BP/Safeway forecourts from Morrisons.

The deal was originally announced in the summer and involved 30 sites but BP retained pre-exemption rights on 12 sites and has since exercised those rights on nine of them.

ACS chief executive David Rae said: “The OFT will continue to allow the major supermarket retailers to grow their dominant position as long as it persists with its flawed view of the marketplace. The OFT wants us to believe that the grocery market is competitive and working for consumers, whereas increasingly, retailers, customers, politicians and analysts know that this is not the case. We met the OFT to discuss this case, and we reiterated our view that current methods used to analyse the impact of acquisitions served only to hide the fundamental problems of monopoly power in the grocery

market. The OFT is unwilling to tackle the creeping acquisition that is taking place in our market.

“This latest merger clearance reinforces our view that we were correct to launch an appeal to the Competition Appeals Tribunal against the OFT’s treatment of issues in the grocery market.”