Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
The Price of Secrecy
Chatham house is throwing a very cheap conference on what looks like a very well-thought, and focused topic: “Competition policy in global markets“.
Here’s the price menu for the conference:
| Standard Rates | ||
|---|---|---|
| Commercial Organizations: | £895 (£1074 inc VAT) | |
| Government Departments: | £650 (£780 inc VAT) | |
| NGOs and Institutions: | £395 (£474 inc VAT) | |
The bottom-line:
I still fail to understand how officials from competition authorities can accept to participate to such events.
Costs Conference – Last Call
A last call for our conference on costs next week (I have pasted below the earlier annoucement, Tomra is out).
I would be very grateful if our readers could disseminate the programme within their respective organisations.
To help clarify how and why costs are used in competition proceedings, the Brussels School of Competition(BSC) will organize on 9 May a half-day compliance seminar (this seminar was due in early 2012, but was rescheduled).
Amongst other things, this seminar intends to review recent case-law developments, in particular the recent judgments handed down by the EU Courts in the Post Danmark (C-209/10) and Telefónica (T-336/07) cases. Hopefully the Tomra ruling will also be out by this time [it is out].
In line with the interdisciplinary spirit of the BSC, this seminar attempts to “blend” competition law and economics. Under each selected topic (see agenda here), it thus brings together a team of one lawyer and one economist, who will seek to provide an integrated perspective on the issue.
This event is a joint initiative of the BSC and of the Institute for European Legal Studies (IEJE) of the University of Liege (ULg). The registration form can be found here.
Chillin’ Competition goes running
We’ve returned from our holidays with recharged batteries and with plenty of new ambitious and perhaps unfeasible projects that we’ll be disclosing here in due course.
One of our blog-related aims for the coming months is to boost one of the most characteristic market failures in legal markets: not to much competition, but rather too many competititons.
We observe with interest that in our little antitrust world there are almost more prizes, awards and rankings as there are antitrust law specialists. To be sure, we’ve also contributed to this by creating the Worst-Antitrust development Prize and our Antitrust Oscars, but there are many more: just think of Concurrence’s new Writing Awards, of the Jacques Lassier Prize; of the many law firm directories ranking firms and lawyers such as Chambers, The Legal 500, Best Lawyers, IFLR, Global Competition Review’s Annual Awards, or in GCR’s well-known and recently-published 40 under 40 – by the way, don’t you also get the impression that some people must have lied about their age? 😉 -.
The problem with some of these sometimes pricey prizes is that they are inherently subjective. Whereas most of us admit that absolute neutrality and objectivity are unrealistic aspirations (a dozen recent complainants before the European Commission seem to think differently), some things in life can still be measured objectively. That’s why we at Chillin’ Competition have decided to create the first objective legal competition: we’re creating the “Fastest Antitrust Expert” Award.
The news of the Spanish professor who got sued because of an antitrust-related story that he wrote on his blog led us to question our way or life. “Should we run marathons instead of blogs“, we thought. This profound thought led both Nicolas and myself to register to run the Brussels 20 k on May 27th.
In the context of a mutually encouraging exchange of emails (which in essence consisted of Nicolas saying that my two previous running times reveal that I’m slow and of me responding that he’s short-legged) we came up with the idea of opening our challenge to all readers of this blog. These are the rules:
- The “Fastest Antitrust Expert” Award is open to all readers of Chilling Competition: public officials, lawyers, academics, students and, basically, to anyone who has registered for the 20k and who registers on the blog.
- Registering yourself with us is easy: you can either send us an email or write your name in a comment to this post; you must however do that before 1 May.
- On 2 May we will publish the list of names of those of our readers who are taking part in the 20k;
- In the weeks before the race we will be organizing some more stuff open to all participants (I have in mind something like Nicolas cooking pasta for everyone the night before the race…).
- The Prize: the winner will get an special interview at “The Friday Slot” as well as a pair of Li-ning running shoes.
Costs in EU Competition Law
Competition lawyers often get lost in the semantics of costs…
To help clarify how and why costs are used in competition proceedings, the Brussels School of Competition (BSC) will organize on 9 May a half-day compliance seminar (this seminar was due in early 2012, but was rescheduled).
Amongst other things, this seminar intends to review recent case-law developments, in particular the recent judgments handed down by the EU Courts in the Post Danmark (C-209/10) and Telefónica (T-336/07) cases. Hopefully the Tomra ruling will also be out by this time.
In line with the interdisciplinary spirit of the BSC, this seminar attempts to “blend” competition law and economics. Under each selected topic (see agenda here), it thus brings together a team of one lawyer and one economist, who will seek to provide an integrated perspective on the issue.
This event is a joint initiative of the BSC and of the Institute for European Legal Studies (IEJE) of the University of Liege (ULg). The registration form can be found here.
European Competition Football Championship 2012
[Note by Alfonso: That competition authorities compete to be among the world-class enforcers is something we all knew (see for instance GCR’s Ranking Enforcement Special Issue). What you probably didn’t know (and, frankly, we didn’t either) is that there is a football championship in which competition authorities also sweat out their competitive spirit. We have been asked by the organisers of the upcoming edition to help promote this event among competition authorities, and we’re glad to do it; it looks like sure fun!]
After two highly successful and memorable events hosted by the NMa and the Bundeskartellamt in 2010 and 2011, the Hungarian Competition Authority (GVH) has the pleasure to announce that the 3rd European Competition Football Championship (ECFC) will take place in Budapest this year.
The GVH is pleased to invite all European competition authorities to the 2012 ECFC in Budapest, which will be organised together with a workshop on sports and competition law.
Workshop on sports and competition law
3rd European Competition Football Championship 2012
7-8 September 2012
Budapest, Hungary
Should you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact the organisers at ECFC2012@gvh.hu. Any interest in participating at the event should be made by the end of April.
Here are some pics from the winners of the previous editions: The Ducth NMa (2010) and the Hungarian GVH (2011).
You’re invited
It’s very impolite to speak about parties to which only you have been invited. Yet, this is exactly what Nicolas did last Friday!
Nico talked about all these competition law-related social events that are taking place in Brussels this week, without realizing that many of us have not been invited (I guess this was not on the piece of Social Do’s and Don’ts that he suggested on his post…) 😉
To compensate for my co-blogger’s mistake, I will free-ride on my firm to invite you to some free drinks extend a personal invitation to all readers of Chillin’Competition for THE competition law social event of the month in Brussels: the launch of the book “Market Power in EU Antitrust Law” (we had intended to write a review here, but our objectivity is so compromised that we will ask someone else better placed than us to do it) next Tuesday.
I’m not kidding; you’re all welcome to share a drink with us. You only have to confirm your attendance to the email address that appears on the invitation.
Hope to see you there!
P.S. Nicolas will miss it because he will be lecturing in Russia, so here is another incentive to come.
Social Competition Law
Next week is when Brussels antitrust specialists d***k their face off socialize.
See for yourselves:
- On Tuesday, the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati organizes a reception at the Cercle de Lorraine;
- On Thursday RBB Economics throws a party at the Concert Noble for its 20th anniversary;
- On Thursday, Mc. Dermott Will & Emery also holds a reception.
On top of this comes the1st edition of the Life Sciences College organised by the law firm Sidley Austin (I will make a short presentation there) and a GCLC lunch talk on minority shareholdings on Friday.
A heavy week ahead. I advise a quiet week-end. And the reading of this piece on Do’s and Dont’s at social events.
Disclaimer: unlike what a French dead writer may say, this post does not purport to flatter the Brussels establishement on competition law.
New seminars in Madrid
This year’s edition of the EU and Spanish competition law course in Madrid has so far been a great success in terms of attendance, student’s evaluations and quality of presentations/discussions. Some of you have shown interest in the next seminars that will be held within the framework of the course, so here are the programs for:
– the seminar on recent developments in abuse of dominance and merger control (in theory I’m a co-coordinator together with Cecilio Madero but he’s actually the one who has put the program together) which will take place next Friday (click here: Seminar 24 February 2012);
– the seminar on the application of competition and state aid rules to public entities, coordinated by José Luis Buendía (Garrigues) and Jorge Piernas (EUI), and which will take place on March 1-2 (the program is available here: State aid and public intervention-1-2 March).
If any of you is interested in further info, you can contact me at alfonso.lamadrid@garrigues.com
New seminars in Madrid (and a secret)
I´m flying to Madrid today to speak tomorrow at a seminar coordinated by Eric Gippini and Fernando Castillo de la Torre (both from the European Commission´s Legal Service) within the XV European and Spanish Competition Law Course directed by Luis Ortiz.
The day program for tomorrow features (i) a discussion on “Investigative meaures and fundamental rights” with Ralf Sauer (European Commission´s Legal Service), Salomé Santos (British Foods), Rafael Baena (Ashurts) and Diego Castro Villacañas (Spanish Competition Authority); (ii) a panel on the functioning of the European Competition Network and the evolution of the decentralized enforcement system during 2011 with Ewoud Sakkers (Head of Unit at DG Comp), Rafael Allendesalazar (MLAB) and Diego Castro Villacañas (CNC); and (iii) a debate on novelties and case-law developments with regard to vertical agreements with Andrés Font (Gibson Dunn), Bernard Mongin (European Commission´s Legal Service) and myself. All the panel discussions will be moderated by Eric and Fernando. Registrations are now closed, but if any of our Spain-based readers is interested in attending you can drop me a line and we can try to arrange it.
Not that I´m objective, but coming to Madrid for this is always great fun. I´ll tell you a secret: one of the greatest attractives of coming to speak at this course are the post-conference dinner+drinks social events (in fact, Nicolas is still on a diet since his last visit two weeks ago; he´s back on Tuesday, so he´ll have to quit soon). The pic illustrating this post is actually from the entrance of the place where such events generally kick-off. (It´s also probably one of the places where I spend more time when I´m around, right after the office and home).
On February 24th there will be another seminar on “Recent Developments on Abuse of Dominance and Merger Control” coordinated by Cecilio Madero (Deputy Director General at DG Comp) and myself. Amongst other topics, this seminar will feature an interesting discussion on the prohibition decision adopted by the Commission in the Deutsche Borse/NYSE Euronext merger. The program for this seminar will soon be out. We´ll keep you posted.
Costs Conference
A reminder for our readers: the Brussels School of Competition (BSC) will hold to organize on 25 January in Brussels a half-day compliance seminar entitled “Costs in Competition Law”.
In line with the interdisciplinary spirit of the BSC, this event attempts to “blend” competition law and economics. Under each selected topic (see link to the agenda below), it thus brings together a team of one lawyer and one economist, who will seek to provide an integrated perspective on the issue.
The programme can be found at the end of this post. In recent days, we have made several significant additions to it.
Costs in competition law – Compliance Seminar – 25012012 – Programme
Chillin'Competition 