Sometimes competition law looks as if it’s on the side of the bullies. Take, for example, the French Autorité de la concurrence’s recent decision in the Paris food retail sector case. The Autorité…
A review of all decisions adopted pursuant to Article 81 EC/101 TFEU between the first of January 2000 and the first of January 2011 reveals that, excluding hardcore cartels, the Commission has…
On 2 February 2012, the EU's General Court issued two important judgments concerning the issue of whether joint venture parents can be held liable for the cartel behaviour of their 50-50 joint…
In late January, the Commission finally published the non-confidential version of its decision in Unilever/Sara Lee Body Care (adopted in November 2010). The decision, reached after a Phase II…
In his last blog, Thomas Graf pointed out, as brilliantly and persuasively as he customarily does, the key features and implications of the Jan. 11, 2012decision of the Italian Antitrust Authority (“…
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has recently released two reports relating to the pharmaceutical industry. A significant theme in both reports is a concern that brand name pharmaceutical companies…
Public discussion on merger control in the last few years of has put the spotlight on two elements of contemporary merger analysis: market definition and market concentration, of which the former has…
On 13 September, the Commission published its decision of 31 March 2011 in China National Bluestar/Elkem. After DSM/Sinochem/JV (decision of 10 May but published in June), this was the second…
One of the main concerns raised by the decentralization of EU competition law enforcement related to the risk of different competition authorities prosecuting and sanctioning the same cross-border…
The past decade has seen a flurry of articles published trying to make sense of the degree of control that the EU Courts exercise on complex economic reasoning. By contrast, much less has been…
