This post was written by Mr. Eduardo Molan Gaban and Mr. Bruno Droghetti Magalhães Santos, partner and associate, respectively, of the Antitrust/Competition and International Trade areas at Machado Associados Advogados e Consultores. At the end of 2011, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) rejected a proposal for a Cease and Desist Agreement (TCC) prepared…
In the run-up to the London Olympics, it seems particularly appropriate that the competition theme of the moment is all about fighting. Take Spain, for instance. The country’s antitrust authority – the Comisión Nacional de la Competencia (CNC) – has recently started legal proceedings against a bunch of matadors and a sports marketing rights consultancy…
The Competition Appeal Tribunal has upheld the Competition Commission’s decision to require Stericycle to divest the entirety of Ecowaste Southwest following its prohibition of the completed merger. In dismissing Stericycle’s appeal, the Tribunal confirmed that the Commission is not obliged to identify of its own motion all possible remedies, but merely those that would clearly resolve the harm to competition caused by the merger. It also held that, in a completed merger, the purchaser takes the risk of being required to divest the entire business acquired by it, if this is necessary to restore effective competition.
In a judgment handed down today (C-158/11 Auto 24), the EU Court of Justice (“CJEU”) confirmed that suppliers operating selective distribution systems (“SDSs”) are under no obligation to publish the criteria used to appoint distributors, and that a car manufacturer using a SDS based on quantitative criteria is under no obligation to apply these criteria…
The U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a decision that provides generic pharmaceutical manufacturers with the ability to challenge the “use codes” listed by brand name manufacturers in filings made with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”). The decision in Caraco v. Novo Nordisk illustrates the impact that these “use codes” can have on the…
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)…
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…
On 15 March 2012, almost exactly a year after it launched its consultation concerning possible reforms to the UK competition regime, the UK Government’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (“BIS”) announced the changes that it had decided to implement, with the intention of developing and improving the competition regime in the UK. There will…
