What are commitments? The recent effort by the Commission to settle the Aspen case suggests that commitment decisions are the preferred route to settle complex excessive pricing cases at EU-level. Previous commitment cases where high prices have been at issue include Rambus, Standard & Poor’s and Gazprom. The EU rules allow the Commission to make…
On 13 October 2020, the European Commission (“EC”) adopted a fourth amendment to the Temporary Framework of 19 March 2020 (“Temporary Framework”). This amendment builds on the previous three amendments to the Temporary Framework of 3 April 2020 (see our blog post), 8 May 2020 (see our blog post) and 29 June 2020 (see our blog post). The…
The judgment provides useful jurisdictional clarifications for deals involving joint ventures (JVs) acting as an acquirer. The General Court (GC) confirms that when the true players behind the transaction are the parent companies, rather than the JV — because they did the deal valuation, negotiated the transaction structure, and determined the purchase price — the…
The public consultation for the European Commission’s White Paper on Foreign Subsidies closed on September 23 this year. Perfect timing to discuss the stakeholders’ feedback. Wolters Kluwer therefore organized a webinar on October 8, 2020, involving leading experts from the Commission, WTO, OECD, and private practice: Eddy De Smijter, Head of the International Relations Unit…
The General Court’s awaited ruling in the Apple[1] case contains some surprising parts, and it is not easily reconciled with case law from this Court and from the Court of Justice. But as in the Fiat[2] and Starbucks[3] cases, it reveals an impressive effort to analyse the issues at depth. The facts are described in…
On 29 June 2020, the European Commission (“EC”) adopted a third amendment to the Temporary Framework of 19 March 2020 (“Temporary Framework”) to extend the options available to Member State governments seeking to support their economies further. Specifically, the assistance covers aid for smaller companies as well as means of encouraging additional investment from the…
1. Overview On 17 June 2020, the European Commission (“EC”) issued a White Paper consulting on “Levelling the Playing Field as regards Foreign Subsidies”. These are major new proposals to protect EU companies against perceived unfair advantage from companies benefitting from subsidies from non-EU States. Countries such as China and Russia have already reacted to…
By Paula Riedel, Thomas Wilson, Athina Van Melkebeke (Kirkland & Ellis)/12 June 2020 In May 2016, the European Commission (“Commission”) blocked CK Hutchison’s (“Hutchison”) £10.25 billion acquisition of Telefónica UK (“O2”).[1] The Commission had previously cleared a series of “4-to-3” telecoms mergers across Europe, subject to increasingly far-reaching remedies.[2] Specific features of the UK mobile…
On 2 June 2020, the European Commission published its roadmap on the possible introduction of a ‘new competition tool’ that would allow it to initiate market investigations into perceived structural competition problems, with the ability to impose market-wide remedies on companies. The proposal has obvious parallels to the market investigation tools already in place in…
Sisyphus was a Greek mythological figure who was condemned to roll an immense boulder up a hill only for it to roll down every time it neared the top. Repeating this action for eternity. The quest for a clear and operational methodology for finding a restriction of competition ‘by object’ feels similar sometimes….
