Introduction and summary The year 2024 brought us a lot of developments in Norwegian competition law, including the largest fine ever imposed by the Norwegian Competition Authority (NCA) for violations of competition law, the proposal of a new market investigation tool that will grant the NCA extensive powers to tackle competition challenges, alongside a continued…
The year 2023 witnessed notable developments in Norwegian competition law, including the resolution of four cases in the Norwegian courts, the introduction of new legislative measures addressing issues within the grocery market, and various legislative proposals. While Norwegian competition law mainly mirrors the laws of the EU, this blog post offers an overview of the…
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…
Exchanging information with competitors can be a minefield. On 29 November 2022, the Norwegian Competition Authority (NCA) fined Norway’s four largest book publishers and a database provider a total of NOK 545 million (approximately EUR 52 million) in a unique hub-and-spoke information exchange case. This is only one of several information exchange cases being pursued…
2022 has been an eventful year for Norwegian competition law, with a landmark judgement from the EFTA court and significant defeats by the competition authority in merger cases amongst other things. Mainly Norwegian competition law mirrors the laws of the EU. However, some deviances in policy and arguably also in the interpretation and application of…
The Norwegian Competition Authority has issued a draft paper on abusive (price) discrimination, outlining how the agency plans to approach the matter, which should be most welcome. Essentially, the legal position is at best unclear, creating room for misapplications. The otherwise famous Post Danmark I case, e.g., originated in a misguided national attempt to apply…
Abstract In its recent decision V2018-22 the Norwegian Competition Authority (‘NCA’) approved – subject to remedies – the acquisition by Sector Alarm AS (“Sector”) of the small systems business of Nokas AS (“Nokas”) in the household alarm market and a non-controlling 49,99 % stake in Nokas. The decision marks the first ever intervention against minority…
