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Regulation: adviser and sounding board

Simon brought an unusual range of expert knowledge, intellectual rigour and playfulness in making us challenge our ideas.
Chris Kenny, Former Director of Regulatory Policy, Oftel

I have had an extensive involvement with the UK’s regulatory environment over the past 15 years, from utilities to financial services to the regulation of professions. I have been retained as a policy adviser, as well as for my forensic experience presenting economic and accounting evidence to the Competition Commission and other tribunals.

I am often used as a sounding board for new ideas and to review documents before publication or submission as evidence to appeal bodies. For nine years, I was a policy adviser to the UK’s first economic regulator, Oftel, during the transition to a competitive market. As a member of the Director General’s Panel of Business and Economic Advisers, I worked on securing fair terms of trade between BT, its customers and competing operators.

In the late 1990s, I was a guest columnist for the Financial Times on regulation and a Visiting Lecturer at City University, Department of Economics, on the MSc course in Economic Regulation and Competition. In 2007-08, I advised the Financial Reporting Council on the development of a new Conceptual Framework for actuarial standards.

Click here for some reflections on my regulatory experiences

Examples from work in a regulatory context

Clients

  • Ofwat • Oftel • Ofgem • Ofcom • Post & Telestyrelsen • Financial Reporting Council
    Community Pharmacy Action Group • The Actuarial Profession

Research (see Articles page for more downloadable papers)

  • The Competition and Policy Implications of Regulatory Asset Depreciation, with David Currie and Martin Siner (1999) (download)
  • Being Actuarial with the Truth (2004) (download)
  • City University, Visiting Lecturer, MSc in Economic Regulation and Competition (1998-2000)

Strategy

  • Member of Director General’s Panel of Economic and Business Advisers, Oftel (1994-2003)
  • Strategic advice to a postal services company on the de-regulation of UK postal services
  • Advice to Financial Reporting Council on framework for regulating actuaries (2007-08)
  • Development of Fair Trading Condition for Oftel, prior to the Competition Act 1998
  • Member of the Strategy & Policy Committee of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, leading the development of submissions to Treasury’s Morris Review of the Actuarial Profession (2004)

Price Caps

  • Oftel: general, technical and strategic advice (1996 and 2001)
  • Ofwat: test and challenge; developing submissions to MMC (1994)
  • Ofcom and Ofgem: pension costs (2009-10)

Costs and accounting

  • Accounting separation: developing principles for Oftel’s regime
  • Interconnection charges: setting principles and investigating charges, including  pension costs
  • LRIC: advice to Oftel on transition from fully attributed cost to long run incremental cost
  • Resale Price Maintenance: advice to retail pharmacy representative body during litigation brought by OFT
  • Evidence regarding attribution of BT’s costs submitted to MMC’s Calls to Mobiles enquiry