April 12, 2014
I recently read remarks delivered by European Commission competition head Joaquin Almunia in Brussels on the topic of cartel enforcement (see: Fighting against cartels: A priority for the present and for the future). He discussed, among other things, recent European cartel cases, fines achieved, cartels in innovation and fast moving markets and recent detection strategies (see highlights at the bottom of this post).
April 10, 2014
Parties in price-fixing, market division and other competition/antitrust cartels can go to some fairly extensive lengths to conceal agreements.
April 10, 2014
The OECD has issued its second call for papers in a paper contest relating to policies including: competition, corporate governance, capital markets and financial services, international investment and foreign bribery. The OECD’s second “challenge” (its first related to competition policy) relates to the operation of stock markets, a topic being widely debated at the moment.
April 9, 2014
I work with many companies and associations in relation to their competition law compliance requirements. In this regard, a new corporate governance text, encompassing a number of compliance areas with sample codes, caught my eye earlier today entitled: International Standards: Annotated Corporate Social Responsibility Codes.
April 8, 2014
Earlier today, the Competition Bureau announced that one company and two individuals have pleaded guilty to price-fixing under the Competition Act in relation to an ocean freight cartel (see: here). According to the Bureau, these pleas relate to a price-fixing cartel for various ocean freight related surcharges (including surcharges for currency exchange rate fluctuations and fuel) in operation from 2005 to 2011, which included agreements on rates or formulas used to calculate rates for various surcharges.
April 8, 2014
The Journal of Antitrust Enforcement (see: here) has published a new April issue, which includes articles on:
“Section 5 of the FTC Act: principles of navigation”; “Erosion or innovation?: The institutional design of competition agencies – A Dutch case study”; “Legal problems of digital evidence”; “Japan’s Antimonopoly Act – recent developments in private monopolization”; “The UK response to the global effort against cartels: is criminalization really the solution?”; “Immunity for cartel conduct: revolution or religion? An Australian case study”; “Loyalty discounts and theories of harm in the Intel investigations”; and “Understanding the limits of judicial review in European competition law”.
April 7, 2014
Earlier today the Competition Bureau issued remarks from the Canadian Commissioner of Competition’s (John Pecman) talk in Vancouver at the Grocery Showcase West of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers (CFIG).
April 7, 2014
As an update to two association cases that I blogged about last December (see: here), this past Friday the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had approved settlements with two professional associations for allegedly restraining competition through association codes of ethics.
Templates/precedents and checklists to run promotional contests in Canada
Templates/precedents and checklists to comply with Canadian anti-spam law (CASL)
