Antitrust refers to a field of economic policy and laws dealing with monopoly and monopolistic practices. Antitrust law or antitrust policy are terms primarily used in the United States, while in many other countries the terms competition law or policy are used. Some countries have utilized the phrases Fair
Trading or Antimonopoly law. The intellectual basis for antitrust economics or policy is the sub-field of industrial organization economics which addresses issues arising from the behaviour of firms operating under different market structure conditions and the effect this has on economic performance. Most antitrust or competition laws have provisions dealing with structure such as mergers, monopoly, dominant market position and concentration, as well as behaviour, such as collusion, price fixing, and predatory pricing.
Source: OECD
On October 5, 2010, the Federal Court of Justice upheld the Düsseldorf Court of Appeals’ rejection of an appeal against the conditions of a merger clearance decision brought by the merging parties (EDEKA/Plus, KVR 33/09). The Court of Appeals considered the action as inadmissible, because the parties had already implemented the merger and thus lacked…
The new U.S. Horizontal Merger Guidelines, issued in August 2010, introduce the so-called GUPPI test, the Gross Upward Pricing Pressure Index. According to the U.S. Guidelines, “[a]dverse unilateral price effects can arise when the merger gives the merged entity an incentive to raise the price of a product previously sold by one merging firm and…
The third of a series of three postings on antitrust and the financial crisis: between hope and modesty, the financial crisis as a reminder of antitrust as a discipline.
The second of a series of three postings on antitrust and the financial crisis: to what extent was/will competition law enforcement (be) affected by the financial crisis?
More than six years after the case was launched, the General Court rendered its judgment in Case T-279/04, Editions Odile Jacob Sas v. Commission, relating to the appeal against a 2004 decision of the European Commission approving the acquisition by French publisher Lagardère of its rival Vivendi Universal Publishing (“VUP”). The saga begins in 2002,…
The first of a series of three postings on antitrust and the financial crisis: did antitrust, in general, and a “lack of enforcement”, in particular, contribute to the financial crisis?
It is commonly accepted that, pursuant to the principle of intragroup immunity, Article 101 TFEU cannot catch agreements or concerted practices between entities that belong to the same undertaking. Article 101 TFEU requires coordination between at least two undertakings: everything that happens within a single undertaking simply cannot be covered by Article 101 TFEU. Yet,…
The European Commission is currently preparing new guidelines for the assessment of horizontal cooperation agreements under Article 101 TFEU. A draft was presented for public consultation in May this year and the final version is expected before year’s end. The section on standardisation agreements has been updated in the light of recent experiences (such as…
UK competition rules and enforcement infrastructure When it comes to competition law enforcement, does the UK pursue a different path to its European counterparts? Well, it is British tradition to favour a common sense approach and we have been known to criticise the arcane bureaucracy of certain supra-national institutions. These preferences will surely be revealed…
In August 2010, the U.S. antitrust agencies released the final version of their revised Horizontal Merger Guidelines, which they use to analyze the competitive implications of mergers between competitors. Whereas the prior (1992) version of the Guidelines had sought to provide a precise, step by step framework for analyzing horizontal mergers — centered around defining…
