In this annual review of Canadian foreign investment law, we discuss developments over the past year, including proposed amendments to the Investment Canada Act (ICA) and new government policies on the treatment of specific categories of investments. We also consider how these trends will influence enforcement in the year to come. Our central observation is…
This overview covers the main developments in competition law and policy in Portugal in the course of 2022. Legislative and institutional developments The Portuguese Competition Act and the bylaws of the Portuguese Competition Authority (PCA) were subject to significant amendments in 2022. Those amendments were approved by Law no. 17/2022, of 17 August, which…
Below we cover the main competition law developments in Spain in 2022, concerning (i) institutions, (ii) restrictive agreements, (ii) abuse of dominance, (iii) procedure, (iv) mergers, and (v) the internal market. The selection, as usual with these lists, is inherently subjective. The authors note that they have favoured a broader selection of issues to include…
In its judgement on 17 February 2023, Norway’s Supreme Court quashed the Norwegian Competition Authority’s prohibition of the 2019 acquisition of tech start-up Nettbil by media conglomerate Schibsted. This is the very first merger case heard by the Norwegian courts and represents an important development in Norwegian merger control. Prohibition of a Below-Threshold Transaction…
* This entry is a re-post of the contributor’s CCM Blog post, find link here. On 24 January 2023 the U.S. Department of Justice (‘DoJ’), joined by multiple U.S. States including California and New York, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google alleging that the “industry behemoth […] has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad…
Significant amendments to Canada’s Competition Act (Act) dominated discussion about Canadian competition law policy and enforcement in 2022. Given the full implementation of the first round of amendments and the formal commencement of public consultation on further amendments, potential legislative reforms are certain to remain at the forefront of Canadian competition law discourse in 2023….
Summary The Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) published a 157-page report on 9th February 2023 (see here the press release), focusing on issues in the market structure and the lack of competitive pressure in the markets of essential software for smartphones (mobile OS) and app distribution services, both of which Apple and Google mainly provide….
The Competition Chapter of the EU-Georgia Association Agreement emphasizes the importance of “free and undistorted competition in the trade relations”. It also sets the obligation of the Parties to maintain “comprehensive competition laws” and have “appropriately equipped, effective authority”. In line with these obligations, an independent competition authority (Georgian National Competition Agency – “GNCA”) was…
On 5 January 2023, the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) published an important judgment in relation to follow-on damage actions relating to the so-called German drugstore products cartel (Case KZR 42/20). In its ruling, Germany’s highest civil court also confirmed a factual presumption of harm in the case of anticompetitive information exchanges. This…
The Dutch Authority for Consumers & Markets (Autoriteit Consument & Markt, ‘ACM’) seems to have tuned down its antitrust enforcement activities in 2022; it did not impose a single fine for violation of the cartel prohibition or abuse of dominance but it upheld one fine in administrative appeal, i.e. the Samsung case. And of course,…
