The ABA antitrust section’s international cartel workshop at the Plaza Hotel managed to entertain as well as inform. David Samuels reports

This year a regular institution in the US conference programme, the Conference Board event in New York, beefed up its international coverage. David Samuels reports

France’s Conseil de la Concurrence celebrated its 15th anniversary on February 13 at the sumptuous Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie building in Paris. James Eyers reports

In February the IBC and the Association Française des Juristes d’Enterprise collaborated to put on an event for in-house counsel in Paris. Máire McGuire was there

The EC continues to face many challenges in the field of state aids, an IBC event in Brussels in March concluded. David Samuels reports

Olivier Guersent is deputy head of the Cartel Unit within the European Commission’s DG Competition. He spoke to David Samuels about the EU’s leniency programme and how the Unit had boosted its success rate in the last 18 months

Valentine Day’s gifts are a sign that the world may not be such a bad place after all. Unfortunately for EU competition policy enforcement, the Commission’s new Leniency Notice which entered into force on 14 February might over time reinforce the cynics’ views that when roses wither, all that is left are the thorns. By Conor Maguire, partner in the EU and Competition Law Group of Simmons & Simmons, Brussels and counsel to one of the largest defendants in the European Commission’s Vitamins investigation

Gesner Oliveira and Bianca Müller of Tendências Consultoria Integrada, São Paulo, look at the recent proposals to overhaul Brazil’s fragmented competition regime, and the chances of getting them through Congress in election year

Alan Riley, Butterworths Tolley Research Fellow at the Centre for Legal Research, Nottingham Law School, looks at the explosive potential of European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR)-based human rights defences in EC competition law cases

At its Doha conference the WTO agreed to establish a multilateral framework for competition policy. Lucio Lanucara of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Brussels, looks at what this could mean in practice

Before joining Fiat in May 2001, Mr Cova was general counsel of Agip and chief compliance officer at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

He is currently co-chair of the Corporate Counsel Committee of the IBA.

Wilmer Cutler & Pickering has announced that Claus Dieter Ehlermann will serve as of counsel in its office in Brussels.

Julian Joshua the former head of cartels at the European Commission is joining Howrey Simon Arnold & White in Brussels.

The Brussels office of Ashurst Morris Crisp is celebrating the succesful recruitment of Belgian lawyers Alexandre Vandencasteele and Denis Waelbroeck.

Latham & Watkins has continued its rapid European expansion by announcing a bold plunge into the Brussels competition market-and to lead this endeavour it has succeeded in hiring four Wilmer Cutler & Pickering competition partners.

Three top economists at National Economic Research Associates (NERA) based in London and Brussels-Derek Ridyard, Simon Baker and Simon Bishop-have quit to establish their own firm. 'RBB economics' will concentrate solely on competition issues.

The former head of competition enforcement in Israel, David Tadmor, has joined the venerable Israeli firm of Caspi & Co.

As competition law grows in importance in Poland, White & Case is strengthening its position in Warsaw by appointing Michele Fajtmann to head a competition practice.

Anthony Nanni, formerly head of the National Criminal Enforcement Section (Litigation I) of the antitrust division of the Department of Justice, has joined Fried Frank Harris Shriver Jacobsen’s Washington DC office as of counsel in the antitrust department.

Washington DC firm Hogan & Hartson has announced that it is to merge with Squadron Ellenoff Plesent & Sheinfeld, which is based in New York.

Linklaters has lured five partners from Portuguese firm Morais Leitão, J Galvão Teles & Associados to launch a practice in Lisbon.

Allen & Overy has announced the appointment of competition law specialist Dr Ellen Braun in Hamburg.

Top Portuguese firm Avilles Pereira & Associados is merging with another leading local firm, Abreu Cardigos & Associados.

McDermott Will & Emery has opened an office in Munich. Competition work will be done by Oliver Steffens, formerly a partner with BBLP Beiten Burkhardt.

Wolf Theiss & Partners, one of Austria’s largest law firms, has appointed three young partners to its Prague office.

Two ‘international’ firms-White & Case and Simmons & Simmons-have upgraded the competition services they offer in Italy. The firms took different routes to arrive at the same place.

The Irish Competition Authority has unveiled a strategic plan which includes measures to reverse its dire record on staff turnover.

Professor Frédéric Jenny has survived the post-Doha shakeout at the WTO, being reappointed last month as chairman of the organisation’s working group on the interface between trade and competition policy. He was first appointed to the post in 1997.

After many hints, the European Commission has announced details of specific changes it wants to make to the rules on car retailing and after-sale services.

Under new clearance procedures jointly announced by the US antitrust agencies on March 5, the Department of Justice is to assume responsibility for control of all media, telecommunications and entertainment mergers, while the FTC will handle energy, biotechnology and pharmaceutical deals.

Chris Rawlins, of the Bankers’ Association in the UK, has been appointed ‘director’ of the UK Office of Fair Trading’s Markets and Policy Initatives Division. He will assume the post from March.

An eagerly-awaited series of hearings organised by two US agencies on the interface between antitrust policy and intellectual property rights began in Washington DC in February.

The EU hosted its fifth ‘European Competition Day’ in Madrid on February 26.

The Australian competition agency, the ACCC, will examine a deal signed in March by three pay-TV operators.

Liberty Media’s bid to create a strong position in the German cable TV sector collapsed last month when the German regulator, the Bundeskartellamt (Cartel Office), vetoed the US media investor group’s proposed purchase of Deutsche Telekom’s six TV cable networks for US$4.7 billion.

The DGCCRF, France’s competition enforcer within the Ministry of Finance, is reviewing SEB’s acquisition of Moulinex. Both companies manufacture small household appliances.

The European Court of First Instance has handed down a key ruling on the scope of the block exemption applying to international cargo shipping companies.

The European Commission has given technology multinational Schneider an undisclosed deadline to decide on the arrangements for demerging Schneider Electric and LeGrand, the two French electrical equipment manufacturers whose merger was blocked in October last year.

As the latest round of European Commission investigations gathers momentum, brewers Carlsberg of Denmark and Heineken of the Netherlands have been accused of colluding to distort the market for their products.

GCR can reveal that a decision by the Court of First Instance is expected soon in the Airtours/First Choice appeal. Airtours made a bid for FirstChoice in early 1999. The appeal by Airtours was made on the basis that it was unfairly precluded from bidding for FirstChoice three years ago.

There was good news for John Vickers, the UK’s chief enforcer, when an appeal tribunal upheld his first invocation of Competition Act powers. The Competition Commission has upheld an OFT ruling that Napp Pharmaceuticals had abused its dominant position. The penalty, however, was reduced from £3.21 million to £2.2 million.

The Canadian Competition Bureau’s attempts to create a remedy in the Chapters/Indigo merger have ended in failure.

The US Justice Department is investigating whether the online music ventures of the various music companies in the US are anti-competitive. In particular they are investigating two sites, MusicNet and PressPlay, and their licensing arrangements, as well as the online licensing practices of all the big companies-Warner Music, BMG, EMI, Sony and Universal Music.

Two of Canada’s biggest oil and gas companies, PanCanadian and Alberta Energy Company, are to merge in a C$6.1-billion stock-and-debt deal.

The battle for P&O Princess Cruises has come down to (as one newspaper columnist described it) 'a series of bets on regulatory approval'. Central to the analysis is competition clearance.

The ‘browser wars’ might be a thing of the past, but the fight for control of the Internet continues to drive competition law forwards.

Centrica, the UK energy and services company and North America’s largest unregulated energy retailing trader, is to buy the home and business services arm of Enbridge, a Canadian heating services company, for £437 million.

Colombia’s two main airlines-Aces and Avianca-are to merge after the Aviation Authority overruled the prohibition imposed by the Colombian competition watchdog last year.

ProCompetencia, Venezuela’s Superintendency for the Promotion and Protection of Free Competition, has dismissed a complaint brought by BMW’s former Venezuelan distributor.

Terms of trade are, once again, under the spotlight as the Federal Court decides, in ACCC v Australian Safeway Stores Pty Ltd, that highly competitive terms of trade do not constitute the exercise of monopsony power by a retailer against its wholesale suppliers.

Carolyn Oddie & Bashi Kumar,
Allens Arthur Robinson,
Sydney

As of July 1, 2001, the new Act No. 143/2001 Coll. on the Protection of Economic Competition governs most competition issues under Czech law, and in this respect replaces Act No. 63/1991 Coll. on the Protection of Economic Competition.

Pavel Dejl & Pavel Nosek,
Kocián Solc Balastík,
Prague

The new Danish government has resubmitted the proposals to amend the Danish Competition Act which were tabled by the previous government, though in a slightly amended version.

Jan-Erik Svensson,
Gorrissen Federspiel Kierkegaard,
Copenhagen

The latest ‘de minimis’ Notice is part of the Commission’s ‘modernisation’ drive, by which it aims to shift more responsibility for enforcement of Articles 81 and 82 onto Member States, thereby enabling it to concentrate on serious infringements. While the aim of giving clear guidance to companies on the interpretation of Article 81 is laudable, some scepticism as to the practical usefulness of this new Notice is necessary. In particular, the breadth of scope of the ‘hard core’ restrictions means that this de minimis Notice will only rarely apply to any real life horizontal cooperation agreement. As for vertical agreements, when these are de minimis they would often benefit from the vertical restraints block exemption anyway.

Joanna Goyder,
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer,
Brussels

This decision is important because it is the first time that the Conseil d’Etat has referred to an ECJ judgment, other than in the context of a preliminary ruling procedure, in assessing the legality of French law. Indeed, the Conseil d’Etat usually either decides itself whether a French text or decision is contrary to European law, or uses the preliminary ruling procedure to obtain the opinion of the ECJ.

However, it is not altogether clear that this decision means that ECJ judgments are fully incorporated into French law, as the Conseil d’Etat only noted that 'reference should be made' to the ECJ’s judgments, which can be read as implying that it does not consider itself bound by these decisions.

Angélique de Brousse,
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer,
Paris

Greater publicity for merger control proceedings through the publication of all formal decisions and a list of notified transactions on the Internet contributes to more transparency in the proceedings and follows the approach of the European Commission. The list of notified transactions enables third parties to better monitor merger or acquisition activities of other market participants in order to intervene at an early stage in the proceedings. Even if they are not contacted by the FCO during its investigations, third parties can now more easily get involved and apply to participate in the proceedings if their interests are materially affected by a notified transaction.

Carel Maske,
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer,
Berlin

The Authority has not yet made its mark in criminal enforcement. Its one criminal prosecution resulted in a fine of IR£1,000 (£1,270) for resale price maintenance. It remains to be seen whether the arrangements it has agreed with the DPP for the purposes of its immunity programme will improve its record. In practice, its success in encouraging whistleblowers to seek immunity is likely to be determined as much by the manner in which it and the DPP deal with applicants as by the precise terms of the published programme.

Gerald FitzGerald,
McCann FitzGerald,
Dublin

In a particularly positive speech recently, the Chairman of the Federal Competition Commission identified the areas that needed to be addressed by the agency and spelt out the policy and advocacy activities he expects the Commission to be engaging in over the coming year.

Gabriel Castañeda,
Castañeda y Asociados,
Mexico City

An interesting feature of this decision is that the Commission was willing to refer the case to the NCA, given the EU/international supply situation and given the Commission’s earlier expressed concern. However, it would seem that the NCA has given both Aker Kværner and the oil companies a warning signal regarding the tendency to use Norwegian suppliers for the Norwegian continental shelf.

Jonas W Myhre,
Wikborg, Rein & Co,
Oslo

The guidelines on Spanish merger control rules are to be welcomed in so far as they will reduce uncertainty as to the outcome of the first-stage merger control procedure. The transparency of this procedure has been recently improved with the introduction of an obligation on the part of the SDC to publish the report it issues at the end of the first-stage investigation. Both the Guidelines and publishing the result of the SDC’s first-stage report will undoubtedly make it easier for industry and advisers to assess the risk of a transaction being referred for a second-stage investigation.

Natalia Trujillo,
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer,
Madrid

In a decision of February 2002, the Film Distributors’ Association (formerly the Society of Film Distributors) agreed to amend its standard conditions for commercial licences to show films in the UK, following the OFT’s view that specific terms of the agreement infringed competition law. While the standard conditions were not compulsory for FDA members, in practice almost all films were licensed in accordance with them.

Elaine Forster,
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer,
London

The decision in Todd v Exxon highlights the fact that competitors must exercise both caution and good judgement when contemplating an exchange of information. It is not a justification to say that the companies are merely trying to keep prices (or salaries) down or that they are trying to save money. In decisions that affect price or wage levels, competitors must act independently.

Ronan P Harty & Christopher H Withers,
Davis Polk & Wardwell,
New York

The US Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice/Antitrust Division are holding hearings on the antitrust/intellectual property interface. We outline some of the issues that will be discussed in the hearings.

David H Evans,
Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue,
Washington DC