SA's Competition Commission has become a handbrake on the economy: Rob Rose

Bryan Brownrigg was never a currency trader. He sold foreign exchange to Standard Bank's institutional clients for 23 years. But when the Competition Commission decided that 28 banks had run a single conspiracy to rig the rand, his name went into the complaint anyway, and it took a decade and a Constitutional Court ruling to get it out again. Financial Mail editor Rob Rose told Alec Hogg how one wrong assumption metastasised into a case that dragged banks, courts and taxpayers through ten years of litigation, and why Brownrigg is only one entry on a longer list. A tribunal sat on a merger decision for six years and then gave a reason for the delay that turned out not to be true. A R14 billion Vodacom fibre deal collapsed. A black-owned retailer was blocked from selling its own business. Rose's argument is blunt: South Africa's competition watchdogs have stopped policing competition, and started doing something else.