A blog about the intersection of antitrust, foreign investment control, politics, and everything in between
Summertime is blockbuster time, and some blockbusters are just too good to be missed. Looking at current trends, sequels still seem to be a safe pair of hands. While I cannot comment on the new Indiana Jones or Mission Impossible yet, my (and potentially the rest of the antitrust world’s) jaw(s) dropped when reading about … Continue reading EC showing teeth: Record-breaking fine for Illumina AND Grail
Co-authored by Carolin Goldbeck Those of you who follow this blog closely will remember that we touched upon the Pharmaceutical Merger Task Force, consisting of American and European regulators, in a short paragraph a while ago (here). Back then, we did not see any dramatic changes in the approach of competition authorities to assess mergers … Continue reading Pharma and mergers – future alignment of multinational competition issues?
Game-changing regulations are shaking up the world of football agents. With FIFA's recently approved Football Agent Regulations set to take full effect on 1 October 2023, players, clubs, and agents are bracing themselves for a new era of oversight and transparency. FIFA’s interests and those of the agents seem to be at odds. With first … Continue reading FIFA’s Football Agent Regulations – Next round of antitrust disputes
Antitrust used to be a niche. Known to practitioners and experts, of course. Cases were kept, progressed, and negotiated in that environment. Those times are long gone. We have seen an increasing trend towards companies turning to publicity and PR campaigns as a tool in both merger control and antitrust proceedings. PR work is used … Continue reading PR campaigns in antitrust
As some reports indicate, M&A activities in the coming years could involve more targets in financial distress than in the past years. The most prominent example of that unfortunate ‘trend’ might be UBS’ acquisition of Credit Suisse. In that case, the European Commission granted a derogation from the standstill obligation allowing the parties to move … Continue reading Gun jumping: More freedom for targets in financial distress?
The German beer cartel with all its tweaks and twists has been broadly covered both by legal magazines and “normal” newspapers. Unsurprisingly, beer manufacturers agreeing on price increases for one of Germany’s vital products definitely makes for good headlines in the news. Still, I would be remiss if I did not use the chance to … Continue reading The Kölsch saga – Klüngel? Or even more?
Co-authored by Friederike Melters. Earlier this month, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared dawn raids by the European Commission invalid. The decisions confirm that a “procedural” step like a dawn raid can be appealed by itself and that it can be invalid because of previous procedural mistakes. They tie in with other court decisions, … Continue reading Procedural errors – rich case law and five key takeaways
The fact that antitrust proceedings can take a year or two is not really a surprise. But recently, the General Court of the European Union (i.e. first instance!) had to deal with a case concerning a cartel which had started in 1989 and whose members were already fined (for the first time) in 2002. That … Continue reading It ain’t over ‘til it‘s over: Commission wins after 20 years (?)
At the beginning of the year, we took the liberty to pause our blog for a couple of weeks. Reflecting on January in hindsight, there have been three developments which each might not justify a post on its own, but are just too interesting (and a continuation of previous posts) not to be mentioned at … Continue reading Best of the rest – News in January
At the beginning of the year, we blogged about the video-gaming industry and outlined some of the reasons why it might face more scrutiny from antitrust regulators in the future. The obvious trigger for our post was Microsoft’s announcement to acquire Activision Blizzard in a mega $69 billion deal. Although the antitrust proceedings worldwide seem … Continue reading Far from over: Gaming mega deal keeps regulators busy
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