A recent report from the National Audit Office has recommended that the Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) increase the number of cartel investigations it carries out. A number of recent statements made by senior officials in the CMA’s Cartels and Criminal Group (“CCG”) suggest that the CMA is listening very carefully. The case for more…
The summaries of the pleas of the actions for annulment lodged by Luxembourg and the Netherlands in the Fiat and Starbucks cases respectively were recently published (see here and here). Moreover, the pleas of Fiat in its own action for annulment against the Commission’s decision were also published (see here). These pleas are important because…
DG COMP has published a study by the University of East Anglia analysing the European Commission’s approach to geographic market definition in recent cases. It has reviewed ten cases from 2008-2014 where geographic market definition was a key issue. The study looked at the Commission’s geographic market analysis in terms of the methodology used and…
On 29 January 2016, the Court of First Instance of Hong Kong ruled in favour of TVB and against the Communications Authority (the “CA”), in the ‘no Cantonese’ policy abuse of dominance case. The 2013 decision by the CA, in which the broadcaster was fined nearly HKD 1 million under the sector-specific competition rules of…
On January 20, 2016, the European Court of Justice (the Court) issued a seminal preliminary ruling on the relationship between EU and Member State leniency programmes in Case C‑428/14, DHL Express (Italy) Srl and DHL Global Forwarding (Italy) SpA v. Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM). The Court held that EU and Member…
The COMPAT’s recent judgment in Hiranandani contains several important lessons for the Indian antitrust community. The case reflects the CCI’s desire for strong enforcement and effective deterrence of exclusive contracts in strategically important sectors (hospital services). And it reflects effective judicial control by the COMPAT of the CCI’s process, institutional design, and analysis. COMPAT’s lessons…
Eturas runs the e-commerce back-end of 30 travel agents in Lithuania. An administrator message to each member informed them that the e-commerce functionality allowing each travel agent to grant discounts would be capped at 3 per cent. That message appeared in part of the system relating to “information messages”. The Court of Justice found that…
Timur Bondaryev and Lana Sinichkina, Arzinger On January 26, 2016 Ukrainian Parliament adopted the law amending Ukrainian merger control rules. The law increased notification thresholds which have been effective for over 14 years after they were introduced in 2002. The current financial thresholds test is substituted by the two new alternative ones (either A or…
On 3 December 2015, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament (EP) approved a long-awaited regulation reforming the General Court of the European Union.[1]Council press release (886/15) of 3 December 2015, Court of Justice of the EU: Council adopts reform of General Court. This press release contains a link to the text…
When your company is raided by an antitrust regulatory agency, what recourse do you have? At first, the answer from the ECJ and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) was “not much”, as companies were not afforded the right to privacy. Over time, though, both courts have come to recognise that safeguards must be…
