In today’s complex and rapidly shifting business environment, companies face mounting pressure to remain compliant while navigating increasingly competitive markets. One of the most powerful yet underused sources of regulatory intelligence Competition and Markets Authority merger inquiry data—a lens that reveals how regulators think, where they focus, and why certain sectors consistently face deeper regulatory oversight.

To make this intelligence genuinely actionable, Doorda aggregates merger inquiry records into a structured, unified dataset, matching each inquiry to verified company numbers, sector classifications, and corporate hierarchies as part of our Business Product. This transforms fragmented oversight notices into a connected, machine-ready data resource. Analysts and compliance teams can now monitor regulatory activity with precision, trace inquiry history across entire corporate groups, and combine oversight data with financials, ESG metrics, credit data, supply-chain indicators, and more. The result is a powerful intelligence layer that supports deeper analysis and better strategic decision-making.

The Regulatory Landscape Through Merger Inquiries

Our analysis of merger inquiry data paints a vivid picture of modern regulatory oversight across the economy. Retail and wholesale dominate with 171 inquiries involving 109 companies, followed by transport (141 inquiries) and distribution services (140). These sectors attract heightened attention due to their influence on consumer markets, pricing power, and supply chain stability.

Yet the breadth of oversight is even more telling. Healthcare, communications, financial services, and manufacturing all show persistent regulatory engagement, indicating that authorities maintain a broad and vigilant watch across industries. In today’s environment, regulatory oversight is expansive, continuous, and increasingly data-driven.

Compliance Intelligence: Beyond the Checklist

For compliance professionals, regulatory oversight is no longer just about completing formal obligations—it’s about understanding the patterns, precedents, and triggers behind regulatory action. Insights from merger inquiry data reveal which sectors face the strictest scrutiny and why certain transactions consistently attract deeper review.

Doorda strengthens this visibility significantly. By consolidating years of inquiry notices and linking each record to accurate company numbers and corporate structures, Doorda enables compliance teams to rapidly identify whether a business—or any subsidiary—has been subject to past oversight. This clarity is extremely difficult to achieve manually. With Doorda’s enriched dataset, organisations can benchmark compliance maturity, anticipate areas where regulators may focus next, and identify industry-wide risks long before they become disruptive.

With 32 new inquiries opened in 2025 across 14 sectors, the pace of oversight is accelerating. Doorda’s structured approach turns this regulatory activity into a proactive intelligence stream—supporting risk scoring, early-warning systems, and more informed compliance planning.

Sector Insights: Reading Between the Regulatory Lines

Merger inquiry patterns provide a window into evolving market behaviour and regulatory priorities:

• Retail and distribution remain high-scrutiny sectors due to concerns about market concentration and consumer impact.
• Transport and communications face persistent regulatory oversight, reflecting their importance in national infrastructure and connectivity.
• Healthcare, finance, and manufacturing show steady oversight, signalling ongoing vigilance on systemic risks and competitive fairness.

Temporal trends deepen the story. A notable spike in inquiries during 2021–2022 reflects periods of heightened intervention linked to supply chain disruption and shifting competitive dynamics. Companies that track these cycles gain early insight into when oversight may intensify.

Strategic Value for Business Analysts

For analysts, regulatory oversight data unlocks multiple layers of strategic value:

• Competitive Intelligence Track which competitors repeatedly appear in inquiries and identify potential structural vulnerabilities or regulatory risks.
• Market Entry Strategy Inquiry volumes reveal the regulatory complexity of entering new sectors, helping organisations plan more effectively.
• Risk Assessment Clear evidence of oversight patterns by sector helps organisations allocate compliance resources where they matter most.
• M&A and Due Diligence Understanding a target’s regulatory history strengthens acquisition planning and reduces the risk of unexpected conditions.

The Analyst’s Advantage

What elevates regulatory oversight insights from useful to transformative is their predictive power. Patterns in merger inquiry activity often foreshadow policy shifts long before official guidance changes.

Doorda amplifies this advantage. Its stitched-together dataset links regulatory oversight directly to company-level data, enabling deeper analysis across financial risk, operational behaviour, ownership structures, and historical oversight. Analysts can uncover hidden correlations, identify regulatory hotspots, and build predictive models with far greater accuracy.

This empowers organisations to move beyond reactive compliance and toward informed, strategic foresight.

Conclusion: Turning Oversight Into Opportunity

In an era defined by rapid policy shifts and intensifying scrutiny, regulatory oversight is more than a compliance requirement—it is a strategic resource. By aggregating merger inquiry data, mapping it to company numbers, and making it interoperable with other datasets, Doorda transforms oversight information into a powerful competitive advantage.

Organisations that treat regulatory oversight as intelligence—not just obligation—gain clearer visibility, stronger risk management capabilities, and a more accurate understanding of how regulatory dynamics shape their sector.

Those who harness this data early won’t just avoid regulatory pitfalls—they’ll position themselves to lead in a world where compliance and strategy have never been more tightly connected.