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Ministers pressed the chairman of the UK Competition and Markets Authority, as the government seeks to scrap the regulation as part of Labour's growth agenda.
The government will announce the departure of Marcus Bokkerink as executive chairman on Tuesday evening after the intervention of business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bokkerink, a former managing director at the Boston Consulting Group, was hired in 2022. CMA seats can serve up to a five-year term.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade made it clear to Bokkerink on Monday evening that it feels that the regulator is not focused enough on growth, according to government figures.
The government has appointed Doug Gurr as the new interim chairman of the CMA. Gurr, the former country manager of Amazon UK, is now director of Natural History London.
Bokkerink could not immediately be reached for comment. The CMA and the business department did not immediately respond.
The competition regulator has focused on complaints to the Labor minister from business leaders, frustrated by what they see as excessive interference in contracts.
“We know that the performance (of the CMA) has not been good enough. “There is a lot of frustration about this across the industry,” said one government figure. “We feel everyone's displeasure.”
The CMA came under heavy criticism from Microsoft in 2023 for its handling of the acquisition of the giant Activision Blizzard. The agency finally agree to the agreement between the two US businesses after he wanted to close it.
In October last year, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also targeted the body speech to business leaderstelling them that “he will ensure that every director in this country, especially our economic and competition directors, take growth as seriously as this chamber does”.
Eleven members of the CMA's 33-member merger panel, an independent panel of experts who decide whether any deal that could threaten competition can go ahead, are due to resign later this year. The business department is responsible for hiring replacements.
One government official said it was reasonable to assume that most of the incoming panel members would have a business background.