Archive for the ‘Jokes’ Category
On the price of beer and bread
In his post earlier today Nicolas was whining wrote about the price of beer in Belgian supermarkets (the fact that he complains about the price of beer when he had never complained about actually cartelized products -such as endives- reveals a typical single-man’s pattern of consumption).
Anyway, he fails to see that things could be worse. Below you can see a pic of a beer taken in India a few days ago. The label features (i) an “MRP” or “minimum resale price” ; and (ii) a prohibition to sell the beer in any place other than the Goa area. That’s a possible infringement combo right there!
[P.S: Following the publication of this post our Indian readers have clarified that the M in MRP in reality stands for “maximum” not “minimum”, and that there is an explanation for the market partitioning clause].
Want more? Take a close look at this news: The All Goa Association of Bakers decides to increase the price of bread.
[P.S. Our Indian readers have confirmed that in this case there is no explanation other than price-fixing].
Good luck to our readers from India, who are making a great effort in fostering a culture of compliance in their country (way to go!). The CCI has earned a reputation for investigating Tacit Cartels, but apparently it won’t run out of explicit ones any time soon.
(Thanks to Christian Bulzomi -also the person half-responsible for this– for the great pics!)
Competition Plagiarism?
A few weeks ago we posted a story about the “competition pills” that the Spanish Competition Authority (CNC) is distributing (see here). We remarked the “originality” of this promotional campaign. Yesterday, one of our readers (thanks, Luca!) posted a comment in which he questions such originality; the comment reads as follows:
“This is scandalous!! Plagiarism!!
They’ve copied the idea, the packaging, the leaflet, the design – literally, everything except the color, red instead of deep blue – from a record by Spiritualized of 1997 – “Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re floating in space”.
Am I the only one old enough to remember this masterpiece?
Still I’d be curious to know who’s the psychedelic case handler at the CNC who came up with the idea”.
Since our readers’ wishes are our commands, we are launching a quest to find the musically literate CNC official/s who came up with this idea, and we want to interview her/him/them here (about music, copyright and the promotion of competition).
The customary beer tasting reward applies to whoever gives us any information that may help us in our quest.
Chuck Norris Antitrust Facts (3)
- The most stable cartels are those to which Chuck Norris participates. No one cheats for fear of Chuck’s retaliation.
- Chuck Norris is both a structural and a behavioral remedy. He can break a leg (the structural component) just by turning to a mean face (the behavioral component).
Office supplies for the new academic year
We don’t know if you ever had the same feeling, but when we were students we kept on buying new notebooks, pens, folders, etc at the beginning of each academic year under the reasonable assumption that they would make us smarter..
I had a reminiscence of that last week. I was in London for the basketball games of the Olympics (where Spain was very close to beating the U.S. Dream Team!) and after visiting Pablo Ibañez’s office at LSE (btw, he has been awarded the Departmental teaching award; congrats!) I passed by a legal bookshop called Hammicks where I remembered having spotted some fun stuff. I couldn’t resist purchasing some office supplies for the new year:
A note pad
A cushion
And a new book for my shelf: What Every Lawyer Thinks About Apart from Sex? (it’s 200 blank pages are a must-read!)
Light menu
Since these days we’re read mostly by those unfortunate people not enjoying August holidays, we’ve decided to publish a few light posts. This one is particularly light:
Some of you have conveyed to us your surprise about the fact that -despite our frequent attention to food cases (an attention which was prompted by the landmark endives case)- we missed the news about confectionery manufacturer Haribo being sanctioned by the Bundeskartellamt for exchanging competitively relevant information (see here).
The case actually appears to be a very interesting one (thanks to Gavin Bushell for pointing our attention to it). Not knowing more about it than what the press release says, the Bundeskartellamt’s application of two instruments developed for cartel cases (i.e. leniency and settlements) in a stand-alone exchange of information case appears to confirm the concerns I (I use the singular because Nico and I disagree on this) expressed in previous posts (see here) about the possibility of stand-alone information exchanges suddenly being treated as cartels. I stick to what I said back then: “enlarging the legal concept of cartel so as to encompass information exchanges, thereby applying to them all the instruments that were developed and justified in the framework of the fight against cartels is bad policy and a dangerous development”.
In our defense, we have to explain that there is actually a reason why we missed these news: it’s bikini time. We’re healthy guys, and therefore a few weeks ago we decided to get sweets and carbohydrates out of our enforcement menu saga. You may remember that the last of our post on competition and food related to shrimps; today we have a mushroom side complement (all very proteic and Dukan diet compliant as you can see): last Wednesday a U.S. federal judge sanctioned a company in multidistrict litigation alleging a conspiracy to hike mushroom prices, holding the mushroom seller liable for an affiliated distributor’s destruction of documents sought by the plaintiffs (see here) (Thanks to José Carlos da Matta for the pointer!).0
By the way, one our readers particularly liked the shrimp post; Eva, if you like mushrooms too we suggest you try this (pictured above).
Getting serious now, the fact that we’re recurrently joking about food cases is not only a consequence of the limited scope of our sense of humor, but is made possible by food having become an enforcement priority for competition authorities. I, for one, am currently involved in a few food-related cases. In fact, European competition authorities seem to be competing as to which one is toughest on food. The evidence: check out the European Competition Network’s very interesting report on its members activities in the food sector.
Competition pills
[This is not a joke]
The Spanish Competition Authority (“CNC”) has entered the “pharma” business by launching a new product: “Competition pills”.
You read well. The CNC is giving away packages that ressemble medicine packages (in reality they’re full of sweets…). The packages include an informative leaflet of the sort that one also finds accompanying pharmaceutical products; this is one example of what these leaflefts say:
Competition “alleviates the symptoms derived from the congestion of the economic system, by eliminating monopolies and barriers to entry“.
“Especially recommended for cases of economic limpness and ciclical crisis“.
“Thanks to its formula and active principles, Competition produces beneficial effects on the consumer under the form of inferior prices or greater abundance, variety and quality of products, with the ensuing improvement the welfare of society’s organism“.
The leaflets included inside the “medicine package” also explain what the functions of the CNC are and what it its that the institution does in practice for the protection of competition. They advise to “maintain the product at the reach and sight of public administrations, public organisms, private companies and consumers”. They also warn about the possible side-effects of Competition: “it is foreseeable that it may cause reactions on the part of pressure groups and lobbies”, for those cases, the CNC recommends to “increase the dosis of Competition“.
In sum, the leaflet emphasize that “without Competition, the health of the economic system is at risk“.
Interestingly, the CNC’s [looking for the right adjective…….] “original” initiative is aimed at increasing its visibility and intends to make known the importance of its functions precisely at a time where a draft new law that could radically change the institutional model is in the pipeline.
The post of a summer day
Today is not only busy but also extremely hot in Brussels (no kidding). An ideal day for a fresh summer story.
Italian beach owners have called a lockout on 3 August to protest against the obligation imposed by the Services Directive to open up beach concessions to competition (for more, see here). Actually, it seems that the application of this Directive to beaches has been the source of some concern at the European Parliament (see here).
The reader who has sent us this information adds that the current lack of competition is evident to anyone visiting private beaches this summer. We have been provided with evidence that shows that the prices applied in Knokke (Belgium) are supra-competitive, and it seems that this is the case throughout the EU [which is why you should all spend yor holidays in Spain, where beaches are great and public 😉 ].
A week ago another friend/reader from DG Comp wrote to us complaining about the every day cartels that he had identified in beaches, including the renting of hammocks, pedal boats and drinks.
All these reports have generated widespread concern at DG Comp. We are told that many officials have volunteered to conduct in-depth on-site investigations. Hords of DG Comp’s staff are leaving Brussels these days in order to conduct extenuating beach inspections which, in some cases, may last for over a month. They can be spotted at airports flying to almost every beach destination in Europe.
I had lunch at the Commission’s canteen today and was told by insiders that during August the Commission will be giving absolute priority to this sector investigation. In fact, and this is an exclusive from Chillin’Competition: we are told that Commissioner Almunia has decided to settle the investigation on Google in order to free resources for this programmed massive beach inspections. One of the officials heading an inspection team has sent us the pic that illustrates this post and that proves the Commission’s zealousness.
We owe you an apology
We apologize. We have always stood up for the proposition that whenever an error is made one has to publicly admit the blame, apologize and carry on.
We do not know how it happened, but we have fallen short in our responsibility to inform/entertain readers of this blog as we should have.
In sum, we are very sorry to have missed this story for over a month:
On June 25, the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation into whether Church & Dwight Co., maker of Trojan-brand condoms and other consumer products, had attempted to monopolize the U.S. condom market. (see Closing Letter here).
“Monopolize the U.S. condom market“; isn’t that something? We are told by insiders that the FTC had undertaken action on this market given its special characteristics. Aside from the well-known elasticity of the condoms market, there are apparently other features that incentivize market players to engage in hard-core practices/naked restraints. Some stakeholders are said to be disappointed by what they perceive as a premature climax.
Enforcement menu: shrimps
Last Friday the European Commission confirmed that it has addressed a Statement of Objections to four traders of North Sea Shrimp over a suspected cartel. We learnt the news through one of the sites that we check several times a day: www.seafoodsource.com; see here).
Some of you have conveyed to us the suspicion that, in reality, DG Comp has sent this SOs in an attempt to force us to write about it. According to this theory, the guys at Bubba Comp, DG Gump. DG Comp were worried about our silent week and decided to resort to the big guns: a food case. Judging by precedents (notably our well known endive saga), they knew that we wouldn’t let it pass by without a comment.
As credible as this theory may sound…. the sending of these SOs at this time of the year is in reality a classic piece of July desk clearing on the part of the Commission. Getting one of these right before the holidays is one of the occupational hazards of being a competition lawyer in private practice in Brussels (the other one coming the run up Christmas).
In any event, we should not be making jokes about this. It is a serious matter. Nicolas – a renowned shrimp consumer may moreover be a victim of this alleged shrimp conspiracy- One nonetheless wonders: have they caught the big fish? It certainly isn’t small fry!
PS. A Chillin’Leak: We have been told by very reliable sources that the Commission found the evidence for this case during a “fishing expedition”.
Chillin'Competition 