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
As authorities worldwide step up enforcement of their merger control rules, companies planning deals in 2018 must pay even closer attention to their obligations and conduct throughout the period from early planning up to final merger control clearance. We are seeing more authorities impose heavy fines for an increasingly wide range of pre-clearance conduct, with…
On 19 December 2017 the Federal Administrative Court issued three judgments reversing the sanctions against the producers Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Bayer imposed by the Competition Commission which totaled in CHF 5.7 million. The court concludes that the non-binding price recommendations published by the three pharmaceutical companies did not restrict competition but rather prevented excessive…
Background This case concerns a dispute between Coty Germany GmbH, a supplier of luxury cosmetic products, and Parfümerie Akzente GmbH, an authorised retailer. Coty Germany, a subsidiary of the US parent company Coty Inc., sells luxury cosmetics in Germany through a selective distribution network of authorised distributors. Parfümerie Akzente is a longstanding authorised distributor for…
More than a year has passed since the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) completed its first investigations into the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market. However, it has recently struck another blow yet again and, one should say, with renewed vigour. The first companies that fell under antitrust sanctions were Alcon and distributors (Alcon case). The AMCU passed…
On 4 November 2017, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed the amendments to China’s Anti-Unfair Competition Law (AUCL). The amendments will take effect from 1 January 2018. This is the first time that the AUCL has been revised since its entry into force in 1993. As part of the amendments, the AUCL’s…
In late October 2017 the AMCU approved the Typical Requirements for Vertical Concerted Actions of Business Entities (hereinafter – the Typical Requirements). The development of the document was due to the commitments undertaken by Ukraine in accordance with the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Prior to the adoption of the Typical Requirements the issues of the AMCU’s…
The competition and agricultural rules in the EU treaties have lived separate lives for many decades. While an agricultural exemption from the competition rules was already foreseen by Article 42 of the Treaty of Rome (now Article 42 TFEU) and this exemption has been included in secondary legislation since 1962, in practice its scope was…
On 14 August 2017, the National Development and Reform Commission (“NDRC“) released a draft of the Guidelines on Pricing Conduct by Business Operators for Drugs in Shortage and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (“Draft Guidelines“). NDRC is seeking comments on the Draft Guidelines until mid-September. One day later, NDRC made public the full text of its decisions…
On June 21-23, the OECD held a roundtable on the theme of “Algorithms and Collusion,” as part of a wider work stream on competition in the digital economy. The OECD roundtable reflects a shift in the debate over the antitrust implications of big data from concerns about the potential for companies to hoard big data,…
The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (‘the AMCU’) has recently completed complex research into the national tobacco market. The market research was triggered by the investigation against ‘TEDIS’ (‘Company’), which has a monopoly on the market of cigarette distribution in Ukraine. The study started back in 2015 and resulted in the Company being fined for approximately…
