Disclosures of interest

BAA Airports

Members' interests:

Peter Moizer is one of the three strategic advisers to the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, dealing with long term funding issues, such as the balance between equity and bonds. External fund manager control the investments of the Pension Fund. Professor Moizer has no involvement in the share selection decisions of the Pension Fund and is unaware of the shares in which it invests. It is possible, however, that the Pension Fund may include investments the value of which could be affected by the outcome of the inquiry.

Laura Carstensen was until 2004 an equity partner at Slaughter and May and her capital in the firm will be repaid over a period of time, but as yet has not been fully repaid. Slaughter and May includes British Airways and Consignia amongst its clients. Mrs Carstensen never advised British Airways or Consignia.

John Collings' wife is a senior employee of an international executive recruitment firm which serves clients across a wide range of industries. Within the last two years clients that the firm's London office has assisted with recruitment have included BAA Limited, the Office of Fair Trading and the Department for Transport and one of the firm's offices outside the UK worked for a member of the consortium that recently purchased BAA. Over the same period, the firm has also worked for a few other companies active in the UK air transport sector, specifically members of the consortia owning civil airports and providers of air services. In aggregate the firm's work for these companies has not accounted for a significant proportion of its total fee income. Her own area of specialisation is outside the air transport sector and none of her personal workload has been undertaken for companies that operate civil airports or use them to provide air services.

The members mentioned above and the CC do not believe that these matters will prejudice the ability of the Group to discharge its functions in an independent and impartial manner.

Staff interests:

Clare Potter, Chief Legal Adviser to the CC, was a partner for Simmons and Simmons until September 2004. Simmons and Simmons is acting for the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in relation to the price control. These are new instructions which were secured after Ms Potter left the partnership. Simmons and Simmons has also acted for BA in relation to previous quinquennial inquiries but Ms Potter had no personal involvement with this client.

John Davies, Chief Economist to the CC, published Closing Loopholes in 2002, a bulletin for Frontier Economics. This described a problem in the regulatory price control relating to Aer Rianta airports in Ireland, and was subsequently published in Competition (an Irish journal of competition policy). Mr Davies had substantial prior experience in the sector. As a consultant for various firms from 1994 to 2003, he worked for inter alia: Emirates, Aer Lingus, Iberia, Transavia, Birmingham International Airport, NATS British Airways, the CAA in the UK and for the European Commission on a case relating to the air sector. Mr Davies was until September 2003 an employee and shareholder in Frontier Economics, an economics consultancy, and worked on the previous quinquennial review of airports 2001 and 2002. Mr Davies initially advised British Airways during the CAA review, including analysing the issues and advising on submissions. In 2002, Mr Davies advised Manchester Airport during the CC inquiry and helped to prepare submissions and appeared on behalf of Manchester Airport at CC hearings.

Peter John, an economist at the CC, has worked on regulatory reviews before for other government departments and government customer organisations in other regulated sectors. Last year Mr John was employed as a contractor by Europe Economics, which has done some research for BAA. Mr John knew nothing about any work done for BAA and is no longer associated with Europe Economics.

The staff mentioned above and the CC do not believe that these matters will prejudice the ability of the Group to discharge its functions in an independent and impartial manner.