A PYMNTS Company

Blog o’ Blogs January

By  |  January 26, 2018

A new year begins and the paperwork stacks up! 2018 has kicked off with quite the sea-change in attitudes, with regulators across the globe cracking down on the increasingly interconnected multi-polar transactions that are ever more common in our shrinking world.

A panelist brought up an interesting tongue-in-cheek observation about the rising populist antitrust movement at a Heritage antitrust event this week. To the extent that the new populist antitrust movement is broadly concerned about effects on labor and wage depression, then, in principle, it should also be friendly to cartels.
Kristian Stout (Truth on the Market)
You lose, you pay (some) – the CAT’s cost ruling in Walter Hugh Merricks
The burden of costs in civil litigation is considered of great importance to the incentives to recover damages in competition law. In particular, the ‘loser-pays’ rule that dominates European legal systems is thought to create significantly greater risks for prospective collective actions.
Sebastian Peyer (UEA Competition Policy Blog)
If you are looking for controversy, you came to the right place. Today, we discuss resale price maintenance, one of the most contentious issues in all of antitrust.
Jarod Bona (The Antitrust Attorney)
Competition and IP Rights in Brazil: The Exercise of Design Patents in the Auto Parts Aftermarket
The Brazilian Competition Authority (known as “CADE” – Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica) is currently analyzing a landmark case regarding the interface between competition law and intellectual property (IP).
Paulo Burnier da Silveira and João Felipe Aranha Lacerda (CADE/Kluwer Competition)
The year ahead in drug pricing.
Several major drug makers marked the new year by announcing annual increases on list prices.  In addition to drug maker Allergan—which pledged last year to confine price increases below 10 percent and, true to its word, reported 2018 price increases of 9.5 percent.
Joanna Shepherd (Truth on the Market)
When is pricing dicriminatory?
We reported in January 2017 on how a Portuguese Court has asked the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) to provide guidance on when “discriminatory pricing applied to equivalent transactions” amounts to an abuse of a dominant positon
Roman Madej and Robert Bell  (Bryan Cave EU Competition Blog)
The Last Time DOJ Sued to Block a Vertical Merger was Over Forty Years Ago . . . And It Lost
On November 20, 2017, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) filed suit in the District Court for the District of Columbia to block AT&T’s attempted acquisition of Time Warner Inc.
Jake Walter-Warner and William F. Cavanaugh, Jr. (Antitrust Update)
About the ISU decision: a policy perspective
A month ago, the Commission announced that it had found that the International Skating Union’s policies vis-à-vis participants in its competitions were in breach of EU competition law. Thanks to DG Laitenberger’s speech, we know that the Commission considers these policies to be restrictive of competition by object.
Pablo Ibañez Colomo (Chilling Competition)
Advocate General opinion in MEO on discriminatory pricing
The request for a preliminary ruling in MEO – Serviços de Comunicaçoes e Multimédia SA v Autoridade da Concorrência provides a rare opportunity for the Court of Justice to rule on the elements needed for discriminatory pricing to constitute an abuse.
Chantal Lavoie (Lavoie Legal)
AG Wahl in EY/KPMG – the latest on gun-jumping
Most merger control regimes provide for so-called stand-still obligations, i.e. the parties cannot implement the transaction until the necessary merger clearances have been received.
Thomas Wilson (Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer)
As Germany Targets Facebook’s Data Collection, DOJ Antitrust Division Suggests Friendlier Approach to Data-Powered Digital Market Leaders
Information can be an invaluable asset.  This is especially evident in the technology sector, where companies use increasingly sophisticated methods to collect, aggregate, and analyze data.
Timothy H. Gray and Melissa R. Ginsberg (Antitrust Update)
M&A outlook 2018
Over the last 18 months there has been substantial, global, geopolitical uncertainty… These events have had global implications but somewhat surprisingly global M&A has, on the whole, withstood these turbulent times.
(Norton Rose Fulbright)