A situation in a market in which firms or sellers independently strive for the patronage of buyers in order to achieve a particular business objective, e.g., profits, sales and/or market share. Competition in this context is often equated with rivalry. Competitive rivalry between firms can occur when there are two firms or many firms. This rivalry may take place in terms of price, quality, service or combinations of these and other factors which customers may value.
Source: OECD
On 18 May 2012, the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court (‘Shanghai Court’) dismissed allegations that Johnson & Johnson Medical (China) Ltd. and its Shanghai branch had set a minimum resale price in beach of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (‘AML’) and rejected the plaintiff’s claim of damages of CNY 14.4 million (‘J&J RPM case’). It is…
Cross-border antitrust enforcement issues are back on the agenda. The recent Toshiba judgment of the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) has confirmed a number of principles governing the network enforcement system set forth in the EU by Regulation 1/2003. Recent national decisions involving the same companies and/or closely related sectors (e.g., the flour milling industry)…
(1) Significant changes to the Polish Competition Law are on the way. One could probably not imagine a better case for a debut in this blog. The Polish Competition Authority, or PCA (the President of the Office for Protection of Competition and Consumers), revealed last week details of the awaited proposal of far-reaching changes to…
On 19 May 2012, China’s Ministry of Commerce (‘MOFCOM’) announced its conditional clearance decision on the acquisition of Motorola Mobility by Google, which removed the last hurdle for the USD12.5 billion vertical deal. The MOFCOM is the only antitrust authority to impose remedies on its clearance of the transaction. The US Department of Justice, the…
The feud between the Chinese Internet companies Qihoo 360 Technology Co., Ltd. (‘Qihoo 360’) and Tencent Inc. (‘Tencent’) has been simmering for nearly two years. This article spotlights the facts and major issues of the dispute. The Facts Tencent runs QQ, the most popular instant messaging (‘IM’) service in the mainland China with over 700…
A recent CC decision, Stericycle/Ecowaste Southwest, in which it prohibited a completed merger and required the divestment of the acquired business, is a salutary reminder to companies that do not wait for merger clearance before completing their transaction.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall and the sounds of the crash get louder as the legal controls get weaker. Take, for instance, the recent £807.2m sale of Edinburgh airport to Global Infrastructure Partners. This is the latest disposal following the original recommendation by the UK Competition Commission (CC) that BAA’s airport operating…
Legal change sometimes takes unpredictable paths: mid-April, something important happened for European law in Luxembourg, but this did not come from the European Court of Justice (the “ECJ”). Not every reader of this blog is necessarily aware that the ECJ has a sister European Court in Luxembourg, which is called the EFTA Court. This Court…
The Institute of European and International Business Law from the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland is pleased to invite you to the 19th St.Gallen International Competition Law Forum ICF on June 7th and 8th 2012. Once again, leading experts in national, European and international competition law will come together to discuss and share their ideas on…
At the end of March, the European Commission fined Czech energy companies Energetický a průmyslový and EP Investment Advisors EUR2.5 million for obstructing a dawn raid which European Commission officials carried out as part of an antitrust investigation. This is the first time that the European Commission has fined a company for the specific violation…
