?Look at that penalty?: after taking on Google and Facebook, Rod Sims departs ACCC with a warning

Outgoing competition regulator Rod Sims says foreign companies that do business in Australia have no excuse for ignoring the nation's consumer protection laws, warning there will be more big fines for breaches in the future.

In an interview, he also said that due to the damage done to supply chains by the resurgence of Covid-19, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was once again giving companies permission to cooperate in ways that would normally be against the law.

And he said efforts to force big tech companies to negotiate commercial deals with media outlets had been extremely successful and defended his campaign to make big mergers harder.

Sims, an economist by training, will finish as chair of the ACCC after five terms in office spanning 11 years, making him the regulator's longest-serving boss.

He will be replaced by Gina Cass-Gottlieb, a competition lawyer who has represented companies in stoushes with the ACCC.

Sims has been a campaigning chair, successfully pushing for increases to fines for breaches of Australian consumer protection laws in 2018 and more recently launching a campaign to make it easier for the ACCC to block mergers - a proposal for which the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, lacks enthusiasm.

The ACCC chair said the increased fines meant companies could no longer shrug off penalties for breaching Australian consumer law as a cost of doing business.