Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
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.
Veggie OD
Sorry, can’t help it.
It is now the Commission that puts food on the table.
Yesterday, the Commission announced a 169,000,000€ fine in the Freight Forwarders cartel.
On this occasion, it announced that some cartel participants had organised their contacts in a so-called “Gardening Club” and that they had used coded language based on names of vegetables – such as “asparagus” and “baby courgettes” – when talking about fixing prices…
Thanks again to Aoife White for the pointer
Beyond Endives
As most readers know, Alfonso has been gung ho about endives.
On pain of breaking the anti-food fatwa enunciated yesterday by my learned co-blogger, I must report today the ultimate case in this series of post.
Earlier in the month, the Belgian competition prosecutor issued the equivalent of a SO in a case concerning a “salad” of unlawful exchanges of information. Please tighten your seatbelt. The practices under investigation cover:
- Candies, including possibly chocolate;
- Ice-cream;
- Sauces (BBQ season is coming);
- Veggie and other stocks;
- Pet food…
Clearly, the scope of this investigation goes beyond anything reported earlier on this blog.
Thanks to Aoife White (Bloomberg) for the pointer.
One last thing: given my co-blogger’s obsessive focus on food, I suggest that, for our next quizz, chief Alfonso cooks an antitrust dinner to the winner, where endives will be served with flour and BBQ sauce.
White Russian
Photographed yesterday, in Moscow’s metro. I know, I am a real antitrust geek…
Now, more seriously, I am spending the week in white Russia – it has been heavily snowing here – where I teach a course on competition law at MGIMO university. This is the third year I do this. Again, it is a very pleasant experience. I am very impressed by the level of the students.
Teaching EU competition law outside Europe requires some adaptations, in particular when it comes to give examples. I thus did my homework to get acquainted with the names of (i) national telco incumbent and of the big supermarket chains; (ii) the basic structure of Russian competition law; (iii) the Customs Union between Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia.
A final thing. I made a presentation at Deloitte and Touche Moscow yesterday on recent developments in EU competition law (see link to the ppt below). It is a rather basic presentation. I have to make a similar presentation in several law firms in Brussels in the upcoming months, but I intend to sophisticate it a little. If you have any comment/input/remarks that may help, please write to me.
Recent Developments in EU Competition Law – Deloitte (21 03 12) NP
PS: to avoid any misunderstanding, the title of this post is in relation to The Dude’s favorite drink…
Presidential Endives
Endives have been a highlight of this blog.
They have become a presidential topic.
Last week, in a large-audience TV programme, N. Sarkozy discussed – and actually lambasted – the decision of the French competition authority (FCA). This comment was in reaction to a question by a woman in the audience, who complained that the FCA decision prevented agricultural producers to coordinate selling prices.
Here’s N. Sarkozy’s answer (quick and dirty translation):
The FCA “went a little to far … I would like agricultural producers to be able to sell at prices above production costs … hence one must define, with other production groups, what is an average production price … and the competition authorities must not consider this average production price as a restriction of competition“.
In clear, the price of veggies should be defined collectively amongst producers at a level > costs, and the competition watchdogs should not challenge this.
But there comes my preferred part. To conclude N. Sarkozy added, referring to the FCA officials:
“They must have the intelligence of understanding that were are not talking about Microsoft and Apple“.
Check the video above or here between 2:00:45′ and 2:01:57′.
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).
A Thank You Note
This weekend we were sending out invitations to the next guests of The Friday Slot, and at one one point the issue of how many readers Chillin’Competition has came up. We checked our stats with a bit more detail than we normally do, and we were amazed at what we saw:
In almost every month of its existence (leaving aside the summer holidays and Christmas) Chillin’Competition has set new readership records.
Last week was important, because it was the first time that we consolidated the figure of 1,000 daily readers. Last week, people from 83 different countries (!) read 182 different posts. Belgium, with 1282, was the country of origin of most of these visits, followed by the UK, the U.S., Spain, France, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy.
Below is the map that wordpress shows us:
In February 2010 we recall thinking that maybe we had hit our ceiling (that month we had 4,993 readers). But in February 2011 we had 10,873; and then in February 2012 we had 14.994…
Throughout its history, Chillin’Competition has had 239,908 readers. Its LinkedIN group has 524 members, and more than 260 other people are directly suscribed to through our homepage.
We are thrilled.
Thank you!!
Reactions to the endives cartel
The French Autorité de la Concurrence has imposed a fine of 3,6 million euros on four French endive growers for their participation in an endive cartel.
The news has attracted the interest of our readers, who have sent us several emails suggesting a post on this story. The interest of our readers on endives has matched that raised in the past by the Dutch investigation on erotic toys and costumes. Weird.
The news has spurred interesting reactions from some experts. “This case proves that what competition law/economics considers in the interests of consumer welfare (low prices, lots of endives) does not necessarily equate to what society (or the students at the College of Europe in Bruges) would consider consumer welfare!”, says Grace Aylward.
Some background: Grace studied as the same time as me in Bruges, and we both share the suspicion that all of the French and Belgian stocks of endives are regularly served to the students at the College of Europe. There is no other plausible explanation as to why endives featured in the menu every other day.
Consulted about this phenomenon, Napoleón Ruiz (who also claims to have been affected by overfeeding of endives in Bruges) said to Chillin’Competition that “the decision of the Autorité de la Concurrence will have the effect of enhancing the dominant position of endives at the menu of the College’s canteen“.
“They are disgusting; I can’t stand them” said Mark English.
Mr. English directed us to another competition lawyer Alex Papanikolaou (“ask Alex; he was a real canteen presence”, he said). Mr Papanikolaou seems to share the opinion of his peer: “Hard to believe people would buy and consume these things at any price, let alone at cartelized prices“, he says.
A legal director at a high-tech company who requested anonimity said “they are as bitter as the country where they’re grown. Anyone buying them deserves the overprice”.
A partner at a Spanish firm says “the Bundeskartellamt should imitate the French Authority and investigate manouvres by German growers of cucumber to impede imports of Spanish cucumber. Why focus on endives when you have cucumbers?”
Please comment on this post if you also have an strong opinion on this investigation.
P.S. For further information on endives click here. For the role of Belgian endives in US politics click here (I’m not joking; and I bet this is the link that you’ll click the most). For recipees featuring endives, click here.
Antitrust Chatspeak
//tr8
Or my first try at using Internet slang for antitrust issues…
BTW, I have to participate to a conference on the pharmaceutical sector in 10 days, and I welcome any fresh intel on //tr8, as well as on any other hot, burning issue relevant to the sector.
Given the industry’s taste for secrecy, you may write to me directly at Nicolas.petit@ulg.ac.be
AT Quote of the Day
I can’t help but reading a good definition of “anticompetitive foreclosure” in this Adam Smith’s quote:
“To widen the market [NP’s note: through leveraging], and to narrow the competition [NP’s note: through exclusionary tactics] must always be against [the public], and can only serve to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow citizens”.
Source: (1776) The Wealth of Nations, Book I Part III § 10.
Chillin'Competition 