The Competition Commission (CC) will delay its much-anticipated first comments on its investigation into the supermarket sector until January, a spokesman said on Monday.
The commission will not be ready to release a statement before the start of the Christmas period following a “huge response” to the investigation, said CC representative Rory Taylor.
The investigation into the £95 billion UK retail market is the third in six years and could threaten expansion plans of supermarket giants Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons.
Taylor said: “The timetable has just been revised so emerging thinking will now appear in January.”
The Office of Fair Trading highlighted four areas of potential concern when it decided to refer the sector to the Competition Commission in March this year - planning, price flexing, the relationships between supermarkets and suppliers and their entry into the convenience sector.
The first comments will set out initial findings and then give the supermarkets right to respond.
Final conclusions are expected by the end of 2007.
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