Former Amazon executive to head UK's competition watchdog

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Amazon Pickup & Returns on South St. in Philadelphia. Credits: Unsplash.

The British government has decided to appoint a former Amazon boss as chair of the competition regulator CMA, an announcement that comes as US President Donald Trump has vowed to defend its tech giants abroad.

Doug Gurr, president of Amazon China between 2014 and 2016 and then director of the group in the UK until 2020, "has been appointed interim president" of the CMA after the departure of his predecessor Marcus Bokkerink, who had headed the regulator since 2022, according to a government statement on Tuesday evening.

Mr Gurr "will bring a wealth of technology industry experience" to the CMA, the statement said, noting that the announcement was not linked to Mr Trump's arrival in the White House.

The tech sector is being boosted by the return of the Republican to the White House, whose promises of deregulation could lead to a showdown with European authorities deemed too rigid.

The CMA has had several run-ins in recent years with American tech giants, against which it has launched numerous investigations.

Microsoft President Brad Smith had even described a decision by the CMA that jeopardised the mega-merger between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard - which has since come to fruition - in 2023 as "the darkest day in (Microsoft's) four decades in Britain" .

The new CMA chairman, currently director of the Natural History Museum in London, had himself crossed swords with the regulator as boss of Amazon, which in 2019 took a minority stake in the meal delivery platform Deliveroo.

London's appointment comes days after Finance Minister Rachel Reeves met with the country's top regulators.

The regulator announced last week that it was opening an investigation into Google's search engine, which could lead to stricter rules being imposed on the tech giant in the UK because of its dominant position. (AFP)

This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.FR. It was translated to English using AI and edited by Rachel Douglass.

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