The Office of Fair Trading has continued to come under attack following its decision last week to place responsibility for lowering fees on rights issues with shareholders and corporates, stopping well short of referring heightened fees to the UK's Competition Commission.

The OFT spent six months researching the costs of underwriting fees, finding that there is a lack of competition in the market for underwriting equity issuance, that average fees have increased while the discounts offered to shareholders to get rights issues off the ground had risen.