Capabilities

Understanding the competitive landscape requires more than market share tables. We conduct in-depth financial and competitive assessments that examine firm-level performance, cost positioning, profitability dynamics, and strategic behaviour in the context of the broader market environment.

These assessments serve a range of purposes — from identifying competitive vulnerabilities and opportunities ahead of a transaction, to evaluating the financial viability of market participants in a regulatory proceeding, to stress-testing strategic alternatives in response to market disruptions. Our approach combines financial analysis with economic reasoning, ensuring that conclusions are grounded in both the numbers and the competitive logic that drives them.

Standard economic models assume rational, fully informed decision-making. Markets, however, are shaped by how people actually behave — and the gap between the two can be significant. We draw on insights from behavioural economics to enrich our analysis where consumer or firm behaviour departs from classical assumptions in ways that matter for the case at hand.

This includes analysing how framing effects, switching costs, default biases, and information asymmetries influence consumer choice and competitive outcomes. In practice, behavioural insights strengthen our work in areas such as market definition, merger effects analysis, and the assessment of potentially exploitative practices — adding an empirically grounded dimension that brings analysis closer to observed market realities.

Economic analysis achieves its purpose only when it is effectively communicated to its intended audience — whether a competition authority, a court, a regulatory body, or a board of directors. We have extensive experience translating complex quantitative findings into clear, persuasive, and legally admissible expert evidence.

Our work in this area covers the preparation of expert economic reports, written and oral testimony before competition authorities and courts, responses to statements of objections and information requests, and the presentation of economic arguments in regulatory hearings. We understand the evidentiary standards and procedural expectations of the forums in which our analysis is used, and we structure our deliverables accordingly — precise in substance, accessible in form, and built to withstand adversarial challenge.

Economic questions are often inherently spatial. We integrate geospatial analysis into our practice to bring precise geographic granularity to competition and regulatory assessments, moving beyond administrative boundaries to construct empirically grounded geographic markets based on actual consumer behaviour, travel patterns, and the spatial distribution of competitive alternatives.

This is particularly valuable in merger reviews involving retail, healthcare, energy infrastructure, and transport networks, where the precise delineation of local competitive conditions can be decisive.
Our geospatial capabilities extend well beyond competition cases, informing a wide range of applications: site selection and network optimisation, infrastructure impact assessment, catchment area analysis, logistics and supply chain mapping, and the spatial modelling of market potential and consumer demand.

Fully integrated with our quantitative and econometric toolkit, geospatial analysis allows us to combine geographic intelligence with economic rigour within a single, coherent analytical framework.