The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has announced the appointment of Sonya Branch as an executive director, filling the role recently vacated by Clive Maxwell when he was appointed chief executive.

Branch will be responsible for a large part of the OFT’s front-line delivery work, overseeing competition and consumer enforcement cases and merger reviews, and will sit on the Board and Executive Committee.

She will work alongside Vivienne Dews, the OFT’s other executive director, who will oversee market studies, consumer credit regulation, corporate services and transition.

Branch is currently on secondment to DEFRA, leading the Triennial Review of two of its biggest agencies and the largest such review by government to date. Before this she was a senior director in the OFT’s Markets and Projects area and led a number of competition enforcement cases and market studies, including the recent private healthcare, motor insurance and dentistry market studies.

Clive Maxwell said: “Her strengths and experience make her ideally placed to take on this major role in ensuring the OFT delivers competition and consumer casework effectively and at pace during this time of change for the OFT.”