Undertaking

Competition law does not confine itself to companies in the strict legal sense — it targets anyone carrying out economic activity, however they are structured. The CMA's guidance on horizontal agreements explains that the Chapter I prohibition (against anti-competitive agreements) applies to 'undertakings' and 'associations of undertakings', and that 'an undertaking is any natural or legal person or other entity (eg companies, firms, partnerships, sole traders, public entities) engaged in economic activity, regardless of its legal status and the way it is financed.'

This deliberately broad, functional definition means that sole traders, partnerships, and even public bodies can be 'undertakings' for competition law purposes if they are engaged in economic activity, while a body that is not engaged in economic activity at all (for example, a purely regulatory public function) generally falls outside the concept. The guidance also explains the related concept of an 'association of undertakings' — 'a body through which undertakings of the same general type represent and defend their interests on the market' — which matters because trade associations and similar bodies can themselves be caught by competition rules when they facilitate anti-competitive coordination between their members.