Regulation

Regulation Experience Sheet

Damian Merciar, the MD of Merciar Business Consulting, is an Industrial Economist (Microeconomics), who has worked as a Business Consultant and Strategist for twenty years. Depending on the size and scope of the project, we are able to call upon the services of some of the country’s leading and experienced experts in the field.

We have an ideological and practical underpinning of the process of Privatisation, being a long standing member of the two leading economic libertarian think tanks in the UK. We also have practical experience of working at the cutting edge of Privatisation proposals and processes, having previously worked for a Regulatory Consultancy, answerable to the key economic regulators of Ofwat; Ofgas; Offer (the two forerunners of Ofgem), and the Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR) from the mid 1990′s. During this time, we worked on a variety of schemes, from the economics of engineering audit – for the “July Return” process of Water Industry technical audit, to devising incentive schemes for preventing leakage across the Water Industry sector. A colleague of ours wrote the proposal that lead to the successful Privatisation of Railtrack (now Network Rail). Another colleague was appointed to write the Official UK Government History of Privatisation.

In Electricity, we have completed advisorial work to the Electricity Pool of the UK, looking at the maintenance of base load supply delivery, and “offlining” power stations. In Gas we looked at, for prospective private investors, the economic case for trans country shipping via new pipes – into southern eastern Europe and the possibility of tapping into the Russian network.

In Telecoms, we worked on the 3G Licence Acquisition and “Auction” procedure for new entrants into the mobile data market, held at the start of 2000.

All of these projects, whether one off projects or pieces that were part of a strategic plan for a given industry or service, have been routed in core industrial appraisal and a commercial delivery schedule. These have included debt gearing proposals to Investment Banks. All of the work has been commercial, both in nature and execution. Where subject to strict Regulatory Audit procedures, parties we were involved with helped advise on how to streamline, incentivise schemes and commercial practise. This included early monitoring programmes (both for commercial gas use and domestic water metering).

We have a keen understanding of the law and have worked with lawyers in a variety of instances as it relates to these industries. Equally, we are able to both design and relay technical proposals that are rooted in physical infrastructure.