Foreword
Monday, 1 June 2009
Featured In: Rating Enforcement 2009
It's been a tough year for the world's competition enforcers. The financial crisis has meant cutbacks for some authorities and a reassessment of priorities for others.
Other authorities have been under pressure from governments to help alleviate political and financial pressures created by the crisis, even if it means deviating from - or ignoring - their usual competition responsibilities. And sometimes governments have simply rewritten the rules.
In late 2008, the UK government cleared the LloydsTSB/HBOS banking merger on newly introduced public interest grounds. This flew in the face of a recommendation from the UK's Office of Fair Trading that the deal be referred to the Competition Commission because of the potential harm it could do to competition - and ultimately consumers - in the banking sector.
For the European Commission's DG Comp the slew of state aid cases it has had to process since the beginning of 2008 has forced it to redeploy many of its resources and to adjudicate in record time on often politically volatile aid. Only time will tell how successful its state aid decision-making has been over the past 18 months.
And in the US, the switch from a Republican to a Democratic administration has not only sparked a substantial turnover of staff at the country's two antitrust agencies, it's also led to a policy shift in some key areas of enforcement - particularly single firm conduct.
Furthermore, several new and potentially powerful enforcers have arrived on the world's competition stage. China's regime is now actively enforcing the country's new antitrust laws - with some controversial decisions already under its belt - while India's competition laws are at long last coming into effect. These enforcers are likely to make appearances in future editions of Rating Enforcement
Only Global Competition Review's Rating Enforcement report provides an annual assessment of how successfully the world's leading competition agencies are meeting the challenge of enforcing jurisdictional competition laws in a global context. While other organisations - such as the OECD and national audit offices - frequently scrutinise individual authorities, Rating Enforcement is the only survey that provides a detailed, comparative and annual evaluation of the world's most important competition agencies.
This report does not aim to assess the impact that individual agencies have upon their economies. Instead, it provides informed comment and analysis of each authority's successes - and failures - in 2008. This is based upon detailed information supplied to us by the authorities, upon the views of specialists in each jurisdiction, and upon our own extensive news coverage of worldwide competition enforcement throughout the year.
Indeed, Rating Enforcement would be impossible without the help and support of the authorities that take part, and the hundreds of competition specialists who helped us with our research. Our sincere thanks to all for their hard work, patience and enthusiasm for this project.
Global Competition Review
London
June 2009
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