I really don't understand this. This article mentions in passing that Asda was fined £30,000 twice for failing to respond to information requests and for being unable to explain how being taken over affected its fuel pricing policy. In the same paragraph it mentions that Asda is acquiring a fuel business for £2.27bn.
Asda has enough money to be able to make acquisitions of businesses that are not its core business costing in the billions. A fine in the tens of thousands is literally not even noticeable to them. What is the point? I accept the CMA may not have power to impose a greater fine (I don't know), but what's the point in a regulator that either cannot or will not impose fines that actually hurt their targets?
It happens all over the place, companies being handed fines that aren't even negligible, they're just not actually noticeable. Nobody will follow the rules if it costs substantially less to break them than it does to follow them.
