Rona Bar-Isaac

Addleshaw Goddard

Addleshaw Goddard competition partner Rona Bar-Isaac is no stranger to tackling complex investigations into very different industries. As a young lawyer in the 1990s, she helped Mars face a probe into the ice-cream industry. Over the past two years, she has been advising long-time client Co-op in a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into the funeral sector after the watchdog found the cost of organising one has grown 6 per cent each year for 14 years, triggering concern around competitiveness.

Acting for the Co-op’s funeral service, Bar-Isaac collaborated with economists to explain this worrying dynamic as part of a narrative that will lay out the reasons of this situation for the CMA. Putting herself in the shoes of the regulator, she embarked on a forensic fact-gathering process; she visited funeral homes and mortuaries to interrogate professionals on every aspect of the sector.

After long research, she is currently gathering information ahead of provisional findings next April. The project is a natural sequitur to a previous successful experience advising the Co-op on a grocery sector investigation that regulated the relationship between supermarkets and suppliers.