European Commission

Competition, Competition law, Competition policy, Europe, European Commission, European Union, Merger control, Mergers, Minority shareholding, OECD, Regulation

(Kirkland & Ellis, Belgium)/ /Leave a comment

Common ownership currently is one of the focus topics in the antitrust community. Einer Elhauge, a Harvard Law professor, has called it the “greatest anticompetitive threat of our times”. Others believe that there is no issue at all. The below gives an overview on the status of the debate and analyses the recent EU Commission…

Belgium, European Commission, State aid, Tax

(Athens Law School)/ /Leave a comment

Lawyers across Europe holding their breath while awaiting the General Court’s ruling on the Belgian Excess Profits case were doubtlessly disappointed. On Valentine’s Day, the General Court reminded the European Commission that “tough love” is always a possibility, but the Commission’s defeat is no mortal blow. Its decision was annulled on more or less “technical” grounds,…

European Commission, European Union, State aid

(Stockholm University)/ /Leave a comment

On 17 December 2018 the European Commission issued the public version of its decision in the McDonald’s case (SA.38945). The Commission found, contrary to its initial conclusion in the opening decision, that Luxembourg did not grant illegal State aid to McDonald’s as a consequence of the exemption of income attributed to a US branch. If…

Dual pricing, European Commission, Pricing

(Sidley Austin LLP)/ /Leave a comment

The General Court (GC) ruling of September 26 in Case T-574/14 constitutes an important (and possibly final) episode in the European Union’s (EU) review of the Spanish “dual pricing” and parallel trade saga. The GC found that the European Commission was not obliged to adopt a new decision as to whether an agreement GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) had put…

European Commission, Resale price maintenance

, (Wolf Theiss)/ /Leave a comment

On 24 July 2018, the European Commission (“Commission”) fined, in four separate decisions, consumer electronics manufacturers Asus, Denon & Marantz, Philips and Pioneer for imposing fixed or minimum resale prices on their online retailers. The total fine imposed on the four manufacturers amounts to more than EUR 111 million. The infringements related to a variety of…

European Commission, European Union, Mergers

(Kirkland & Ellis, Belgium)/ /Leave a comment

Document requests issued by the EU Commission (EC) have become common in complex EU merger cases. A few years ago, the EC would only ask for several hundred documents in such cases – now it has become standard to request several hundred thousand documents from each of the parties to the transaction, often within a short time period (once…

European Commission, State aid

(Kirkland & Ellis, Belgium)/ /Leave a comment

On 16 July 2018, the EU Commission (EC) adopted its “Code of Best Practices for the conduct of State aid control procedure” (Best Practices). The Code replaces the Notice on a Code of Best Practices adopted in 2009 (2009 Code) and integrates the Simplified Procedure Notice of 2009. Over recent years, the EC has implemented…

Cartels, European Commission

(Kirkland & Ellis, Belgium)/ /Leave a comment

The EU General Court recently upheld an infringement decision of the EU Commission (EC), in which the investment bank Goldman Sachs (GS) was found jointly and severally liable for violating Article 101 TFEU as a result of indirectly owning / holding a stake in Prysmian, a company who participated in cartel activities relating to high…

European Commission, Gun jumping

(Kirkland & Ellis, Belgium)/ /1 Comment

Gun-jumping relates to the premature implementation of a transaction prior to obtaining clearance from the relevant competition authorities. It is currently a “hot topic” as enforcement levels across the globe have increased significantly in recent years. In April 2018, the European Commission (EC) imposed a gun-jumping fine of €124.5 million on the multinational cable and…

European Commission, Innovation

, (Baker McKenzie)/ /Leave a comment

Today’s decision imposes a record fine of €4.34 billion on Google. In such an innovative and competitive industry, a decision and fine on this scale sends the wrong message. This post argues there is no obvious foreclosure, explains why Microsoft/WMP is an inadequate precedent (though Microsoft/Skype, in contrast, is directly on point), and asks whether…