Conference Coverage
Civil liability adds uncertainty for potential leniency applicants, says Louis
16 April 2018
The risk of follow-on damages claims in Europe is a “contributing factor” in the difficulty of convincing a company to enter into a leniency programme, and has increased “uncertainty” for practitioners in advising clients, a Brussels lawyer said last week.
DG Comp does not favour competitors, Vestager says
13 April 2018
EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager has denied that the European Commission favours competitors over consumers, calling such a notion a “crazy” idea.
DG Comp official: no presumption of harm in innovation analysis
13 April 2018
A senior official at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition has denied accusations it presumes high-market-share mergers will harm innovation when reviewing a deal’s competitive effects.
Drugmakers must sell established time-release drug when mergers overlap, Hoffman says
13 April 2018
When two merging drugmakers both make certain time-released “complex” drugs, the US Federal Trade Commission believes the established drug, and not the drug in the research and development pipeline, must be divested, the acting director of the FTC’s bureau of competition has said.
Ohlhausen: competition problem, not monopolies, harms markets
13 April 2018
The acting chairman of the Federal Trade Competition dodged a question about whether the US is struggling under the weight of monopolies in the marketplace and instead pointed to a broader “competition problem” that continues to plague the economy.
ACCC still looking into MFN clauses for hotel booking platforms
12 April 2018
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission “still has concerns” about the use of most favoured nation clauses in the hotel booking market, an ACCC official has said.
EU and US enforcers see antitrust role in privacy
12 April 2018
Competition enforcement can take into account privacy and data protection issues, a member of the Federal Trade Commission and an official at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition have said.
DG Comp chief economist: rising profits affect merger analysis
12 April 2018
High profit margins indicate high pricing power, so a merger is more likely to harm consumers as profit margins rise over time in a given market, the European Commission’s chief competition economist has said.
US DOJ clarifies plan to seek damages
11 April 2018
The head of criminal enforcement at the US Department of Justice’s antitrust division has said it will seek to obtain redress for federal agencies that have bought price-fixed products by using restitution as part of its prosecutorial role and pursuing civil damages.
US DOJ: looser contempt standard has made companies more careful
11 April 2018
Companies have been more reluctant to make bold promises in consent decrees after the US Department of Justice lowered the standard for proving that companies violated those promises, two high-ranking officials at the DOJ’s antitrust division have said.