On 19 July 2012 the Bulgarian Commission on Protection of Competition (“CPC”) handed down a commitments decision and closed an investigation against six retailers for alleged horizontal coordination of their pricing and marketing policy (the “Commitments Decision”). This post highlights some issues and policy concerns stemming from the Commitments Decision and the preceding statement of…
Public procurements significantly add to the Croatian gross domestic product. Available data for 2011 reveal that public procurement contracts accounted for roughly 10% of the Croatian GDP. At the same time, based on the number of relevant decisions of the Croatian Competition Agency (“Agency”) and public statements of the Agency’s officials, cartels and cartel like…
Sometimes it’s hard for regulators to see the world beyond the protective bubble in which they spend so much of their working lives. Professional preoccupations can easily blind them to the real concerns – or lack of them – of people living outside the bubble. Often this visual disability is accompanied by a strange failure…
The Goals of Antitrust in the Wake of Crisis Calls for a re-appreciation of competition policy have never ceased on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the current financial crisis has unsurprisingly provided a particular backdrop against which there has been increased willingness to discuss so-called “fundamental” issues both within as well as across different…
On 16 July 2012, a U.S. appeals court issued a decision holding that pharmaceutical patent settlements that restrict generic entry and contain a payment to the generic company are presumptively unlawful under the U.S. antitrust laws. The decision is a major victory for the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s view of pharmaceutical patent settlements with so-called…
Switzerland and the European Union are about to conclude a Cooperation Agreement in the field of competition law. This new Cooperation Agreement goes beyond the previous cooperation agreements of the EU with other jurisdictions. It will enable the Swiss and EU Competition authorities to closely coordinate their enforcement activities and in particular to exchange protected…
The Office of Fair Trading’s (“OFT”) long-running Dairy investigation has been plagued by controversies right from the outset. Allegations have been made by the OFT and subsequently withdrawn, the scope of the investigation has been progressively narrowed and the OFT has even had to pay Morrisons £100,000 to settle a libel claim. Against this backdrop,…
Shortly after revealing proposed amendments to the Competition and Consumer Protection Act (for details, please see my post from May 22), the Polish Competition Authority (the President of the Office for Protection of Competition and Consumers) published draft guidelines on commitment decisions (“Guidelines”). Since PCA nowadays uses commitment decisions increasingly often (125 such decisions were…
The opportunity to submit proposals for commitments in order to alleviate the concerns regarding infringement of the antitrust rules was effectively granted to undertakings in Romania only in 2011, following the substantial amendment of the Competition Law in 2010 in view of approximation with the European legislation and the publication of the relevant Romanian Competition…
In 2007, the European Commission prohibited Ryanair’s attempted hostile bid to acquire rival Irish airline, Aer Lingus. It also refused to order Ryanair to divest its 29.8% stake in Aer Lingus, which it had built up during its aborted public bid. The General Court later upheld both the prohibition of the merger and the refusal to require divestment of the minority shareholding. Subsequently, the UK Office of Fair Trading investigated Ryanair’s minority shareholding in Aer Lingus; Ryanair’s challenges to the OFT’s jurisdiction were rejected by both the Competition Appeal Tribunal and the Court of Appeal. On 1 June the Supreme Court refused Ryanair leave to appeal, thus confirming the OFT’s ability to investigate the transaction, which it referred to the Competition Commission on 15 June. However, immediately thereafter, Ryanair launched a third hostile bid to acquire Aer Lingus, leading to further litigation before the CAT to challenge the Competition Commission’s jurisdiction.
This blog post examines the complex interaction of European Commission and national authority jurisdiction to examine different transactions involving the same parties, as well as the OFT’s reasons for referring Ryanair’s minority shareholding to the Competition Commission.
