When Marcus Bokkerink picked up his phone on a Monday evening in January he did not know it would cost him his job.

Gareth Davies, permanent secretary at the business department, informed him that a statement would be released the following day saying Bokkerink had resigned as chair of the UK’s competition regulator. His replacement would be former Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr. It was not presented as optional.

Following months of government frustration with the Competition and Markets Authority for not doing enough to support growth, ministers had decided it was time to take action, according to people with knowledge of the incident.

As the phone call was happening, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds was on a plane to Davos to parade the government’s pro-growth credentials before the CEOs of big tech companies and financial services, according to one ally.

Bokkerink’s defenestration was exhibit A, designed to “turn heads” and “get people’s attention” about the government’s willingness to intervene, one official with knowledge of the events said. “If you’ve talked to business leaders you’d know they all thought the CMA took too long [and] messed around with decisions.”

After getting off the phone, a stunned Bokkerink summoned an emergency board meeting by video. During the course of the following hours several members offered to resign in protest over what they saw as the government’s thuggish tactics, two people with knowledge of the events said.

Ultimately, after almost 24 hours of discussions, Bokkerink decided it was best for the agency for him to concede and quit.

The CMA, Bokkerink, and the Department for Business and Trade all declined to comment on the details of the incident.

Bokkerink’s departure followed months of mounting pressure from Sir Keir Starmer’s government, as it sought to align the sprawling arms of the state with its central mission to kick-start economic growth.

The first sign that the CMA was in the government’s crosshairs came in October when Starmer told executives gathered for the UK’s international investment summit that “we will make sure that every regulator in this country, especially our economic and competition regulators, takes growth as seriously as this room does”.

Bokkerink was in the room, nestled among leaders from Alphabet and Brookfield.

Weeks later, another salvo arrived in the form of a letter from Reynolds and chancellor Rachel Reeves sent on Christmas Eve that asked key regulators to submit five pro-growth initiatives to boost business confidence.

The CMA’s response three weeks later repeating what was in the agency’s recently published draft annual plan was seen as “particularly disappointing”, one official said. “Jonny and Rachel wrote to all the regulators before Christmas. The CMA out of all of them did not read the assignment properly.”

The government was also unhappy that the agency had published its response, frustrating ministers’ control over the narrative, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Bokkerink’s removal came days later.

With him gone, ministers are already tightening the reins on the agency. This week the government published its “strategic steer” that sets out its expectations for the CMA’s direction and priorities. The previous iteration from November 2023 contained passages highlighting the agency’s “strong and independent voice”. The section was conspicuously missing from this week’s missive.

What was included were instructions that the regulator must “unambiguously reflect the need to enhance the attractiveness of the UK as a destination for international investment”.

The business department pointed to a speech from Reynolds on Thursday announcing the steer, in which he said the government “believes in effective, independent institutions”.

Gurr, the new interim chair who is widely expected to become permanent, insisted this week that the group would still protect consumers despite its altered focus.

But it is evident that ministers want the CMA’s next chapter to be less aggressive.

“The regulatory pendulum tends to swing back and forth over the years,” said Tom Smith, a former CMA legal director who is now a partner at Geradin Partners.

“For a long time, the competition authorities intervened quite rarely. Then they started to intervene more often to atone for allowing deals . . . that led to excessive market power,” he added. “Now the pendulum has swung back.”

Gurr told the FT the agency was making “no changes in the basics, the fundamental mission, the objectives, but I would not understate just how impactful just improving the quality of the process is”.

The regulator has pledged to speed up the CMA’s merger investigations — the focus of much business ire — cutting its merger notification periods and timelines for straightforward deals significantly.

The former Amazon executive has had direct experience of the CMA’s mergers process during the tech giant’s tussle with the regulator over its minority investment in Deliveroo, which was ultimately cleared in 2020.

Gurr has stressed that there is no conflict of interest with his former employer, which he left four years ago.

Beyond the attention the agency’s mergers activity attracts, the CMA is also trying to put organisational headaches behind it. 

The same week that Bokkerink was ousted, it emerged that the antitrust regulator was in the process of trying to cut staff numbers by 10 per cent after a “budgeting error”. The error was discovered last summer. Several people who were involved in the oversight are no longer at the agency, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The CMA has also been speaking to government for years about whether some of its less core business units should remain under its umbrella, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. 

These include the Subsidy Advice Unit, which monitors how subsidies are given by public authorities, and the CMA’s role as an appeal body for other regulators such as Ofwat, the people said.

Gurr said that it was “ultimately a matter for government how they choose to structure and set up the regulators” but any such changes hadn’t been the focus of conversations over the last three weeks.

The CMA is nevertheless in a difficult spot. While chief executive Sarah Cardell has been at pains to show that the agency is taking the government’s growth mandate seriously, the regulator has also just received new powers under the digital markets regime to clamp down on areas where big tech dominates, such as online search.

The watchdog announced investigations under the new legislation last month into Google and Apple. An independent CMA panel has recommended a similar probe into Amazon.

The government said in its new steer this week that the CMA should use its new powers “flexibly” and “to unlock opportunities for growth across the UK.”

“I was approached [by the government] and I had two very simple questions,” Gurr recalled. “What problem are you trying to solve and why on earth do you think I’m the answer?”