A UK cartel law decision identifies challenges for independent UK businesses whose activities are largely outside the UK.

Published: 22 September 2026
Authors: Kiran Desai

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has competition powers.  The FCA issued a commitment decision on 18 September 2026 relating to 11 traders in relation to conduct in commodity futures trading (Decision to Accept Commitments: CA98.2023.01).

The FCA can accept the offer of commitments if, pursuant to its investigation, it holds ‘competition concerns’ and has determined that commitments offered by the direct object of the investigation addresses the competition concerns.  As such, in a commitment decision the FCA does not make a finding of infringement.

Two elements of the current matter raise risks for businesses who think their activities are not subject to UK competition law.

First, the decision relates to traders who, for a cartel to exist, need to be separate undertakings.  The FCA’s decision identifies that each trader (a) traded for his own profit using his own funds, (b) was responsible for his trading decisions, (c) operated as an independent contractor, rather than an employee, and thus the FCA characterised the traders as competitors.  However, the evidence presented also identifies (i) the traders were members of the same trading group, (ii) the trading group was run and owned by one of the traders and another individual, (iii) a single group trading agreement governed the relationship between the traders, the trading group and others, (iv) each trader’s funds were pooled with the other traders funds for risk purposes, (iv) the traders had a common trading infrastructure, and (v) two of the traders operated under regulatory permissions of another trader.

Arguably, there is at least as much to point to the traders being not separate undertakings as there is to them being sufficiently connected for competition law purposes.

Second, infringement of UK competition law requires that the object or effect of a cartel is the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the UK.  The FCA’s expressed view is that the traders (all of whom were based and active in the UK) compete, and so the traders ‘trade within the UK’.  However, the decision is notably absent as regards any evidence connecting the traders’ activity as regards energy futures contracts traded on exchanges, most of which are outside the UK, and the extent that they traded on futures contracts on a UK exchange.  As such, factually, the link to any possible effect of that activity to the UK is speculative at best.

The FCA’s decision raises two important lessons.  First, activity undertaken in the UK that relates largely to non-UK markets cannot automatically be regarded as a safe harbour.  Second, activities undertaken by entities that seem independent but do not fully regard themselves as separate entities, are more susceptible to competition law than they consider.