Antitrust, Dominance

(Finnish Competition Authority, Finland)/ /Leave a comment

Background A special programme for promoting healthy competition in Finland was launched in the early 2012. One key objective of the programme is to tackle the challenges in enhancing effective competition in the Finnish grocery retail sector, identified e.g. in the so-called Europe 2020 Strategy approved by the European Council in July 2012. Resulting from…

Australia, Competition

(Gilbert + Tobin)/ /Leave a comment

Australia has a statute-based access regime – Part IIIA of the Australian Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) (CCA).  The Commonwealth has recently announced a comprehensive review (Inquiry) of Part IIIA by the Productivity Commission (Commission). The Inquiry’s terms of reference were released on the 25 October 2012 and provide a very broad scope for…

Mergers, United States of America

(Baker McKenzie, Belgium)/ /Leave a comment

My U.S. colleagues Lee van Voorhis and Brian Rafkin wrote an excellent client alert on the Bosch case and I asked them to prepare the following short summary for the Kluwer readership: On November 26, 2012, the FTC and Robert Bosch GmbH entered into a Consent Agreement that resolved the FTC’s inquiry into Bosch’s $1…

Cartels, United Kingdom

(Sidley Austin LLP )/ /Leave a comment

On 19 November 2012, the OFT appointed Lee Craddock, a former police officer and case manager at the Serious Fraud Office, as Director of Investigations and Criminal Enforcement.  His appointment follows the disastrous handling of the criminal price fixing case against British Airways (BA) executives in 2010, one of only two prosecutions of the cartel…

Enforcement, European Commission

(Baker McKenzie, Belgium)/ /Leave a comment

On 6 December 2012, the EU Court of Justice handed down judgment in the long-running AstraZeneca litigation. Practitioners hoping for an opinion that tempered some of the more extreme dicta of the General Court found a more measured judgment. The Court upheld the General Court’s judgment in its entirety. But it refrains from endorsing the…

Antitrust, Competition, Market definition, Mergers

(RBB Economics)/ /Leave a comment

In contrast to e.g. the UK Office of Fair Trading, the European Commission so far has not applied UPP-type approaches in phase I merger enquiries. However, a Commission submission to the OECD earlier this year indicates that it is keeping its options open. This post discusses frequently asked questions regarding the concept of UPP and…

Competition, European Commission, Mergers

(Skadden, Belgium)/ /Leave a comment

The Commission published the text of its most recent prohibition decision in Deutsche Boerse / NYSE Euronext. The Decision is lengthy and the Commission appears to have formulated a response to most arguments proffered by the parties. However, a review of the Decision brings to the fore a number of ways in which the Commission…

Dominance

(bpv Braun Partners )/ /Leave a comment

In November 2010, the Czech Antitrust Office handed down its first ever decision to penalise predatory pricing, dealing with the dominant operator of public passenger coach services between the two largest Czech cities, Praha and Brno. The decision to issue a fine was confirmed during administrative appeal proceedings but was reversed by the Administrative Court…

Antitrust, Competition, Enforcement, European Commission

(White & Case, Belgium)/ /1 Comment

The EU’s General Court issued on 14 November two important judgments regarding the extent of the European Commission’s powers to dawn raid companies for suspected competition law infringements (Case T-135/09 Nexans v Commission and Case T-140/09 Prysmian v Commission). The Court held that the European Commission must precisely delimit the products concerned by a dawn…

Dominance

(bpv Grigorescu Ştefănică )/ /Leave a comment

The Romanian Competition Council (“RCC”) accepted the commitments undertaken by PROGAZ P&D SA in view of relieving the concerns regarding infringement of the antitrust rules by abuse of a dominant position on the local market of natural gas installations planning and execution and closed the related investigation.[1]Decision no. 50 of 05.09.2012 of the Romanian Competition…