Grant Saggers, MPhil

Mr. Saggers has successfully led companies through matters involving market investigations, merger clearance, state aid, competition enforcement, competition litigation, and abuse of dominance. He has particular expertise in financial services, healthcare, life sciences, and industrial products.

He has presented expert economic evidence, on the record, in more than 35 hearings before competition authorities and has submitted economic evidence as the named expert in several matters in the commercial courts.

Mr. Saggers has advised clients in matters before the European Commission (EC), the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA and its predecessors), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), the High Court of England and Wales, and national competition authorities and courts.

In merger clearance, Mr. Saggers has provided expert economic analysis to clients through mergers such as Macquire/Energy Assets (CMA); Centrica/Grain (CMA); Mercer/Cardano (CMA); Hanson/Mick George (CMA); Macquarie/Last Mile (CMA/EC); LKQ Corp/Uni-Select (CMA); Adobe/Figma (CMA/EC); Bupa/CSH (CMA); Centene/Circle (CMA); McGraw Hill/Cengage (CMA/EC); MMC/JLT (EC); Aon/Willis (EC, for intervenor); Compagnie de Saint Gobain/Maxit (EC); MyTravel/Thomas Cook (EC); Yara/Kemira GrowHow (EC); INEOS/Kerling (EC); and Project Kangaroo (CC). He led the economic advice to University Hospitals of Birmingham in its merger with Heartlands Hospital to form the largest hospital system in Europe, the first NHS merger the CMA approved at Phase I on benefits. Mr. Saggers has also co-authored three academic papers on merger remedies.

Mr. Saggers provides expert evidence in litigation. He has advised on cartel and information exchange issues and damages in markets including construction equipment, FOREX, aviation insurance brokering, network sharing, trucks, groceries, fertilizers, and private ophthalmologists. Mr. Saggers was appointed the Joint Expert on Overcharge for the more than 80 large claimants in the Second Wave of the UK Trucks litigation. He has also acted as an expert economic advisor on abuse of dominance in matters including glass, industrial products, medical devices, mobile handset technology, airline travel agents, steel, ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS), polymers, electricity connections and generation, and bank charges. Mr. Saggers was the invited economist speaker on the Quantification panel at the Competition Appeal Tribunal’s 20th Anniversary Conference in Cambridge.

In the area of market investigations, Mr. Saggers has advised market-leading companies in CMA and FCA market studies and investigations into matters including Aggregates, Cement, and Ready-Mix Concrete; Care Homes; Cash Savings; Children’s Social Care; Credit Cards; Funeral Services; Investment Consulting and Fiduciary Management; Payment Systems; Private Healthcare; Retail Banking; Retirement Income; Statutory Audit; Veterinary Services; and Wholesale Insurance Brokering. His market review work has been submitted as evidence to the Vickers’ Independent Commission on Banking, the Treasury’s Independent Review of Bank Ring-Fencing, Banking Competition Remedies, and the FCA’s Motor Finance Consumer Redress Review.

In subsidies, state aid, and trade, Mr. Saggers has supported public bodies and private companies on various state aid matters and Market Economy Operator Principle (MEOP) and Commercial Market Operator (CMO) reports, including the Asset Protection Scheme, the Homeowners Mortgage Support Scheme, the restructuring of the Royal Mail, the funding of Ordnance Survey and UK Coal, the Bombardier ITC dispute, and the Paks II Nuclear Plant. Mr. Saggers has acted as a state aid expert in High Court litigation involving procurement disputes. For example, in 2018, Mr. Saggers was instructed by the UK government to provide expert evidence at the International Trade Commission in the high-profile subsidy and trade dispute between Boeing and Bombardier.

Mr. Saggers’ work has been recognized by clients and peers in leading industry publications and awards, including the Global Competition Review (GCR) and Who’s Who Legal. In 2015, the UK Management Consulting Association named Mr. Saggers “Strategy Consultant of the Year.” In 2022, he was recognized as a Thought Leader in Competition by GCR. The publications call out his “in-depth expertise in the financial services sector” and name him the “go-to economist on any market study/investigation.” They also describe him as having an “outstanding set of advisory and consulting skills,” offering advice that is “continuously impressive and right on the mark.”

Mr. Saggers has three postgraduate degrees in economics. Prior to working in economic consultancy, he was a university lecturer in economics at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.