Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Competition Law and Sports: Conference in Budapest
This afternoon I will be travelling to Budapest to participate at a conference on “Olympics – Competition – Sports – Law: Competition and sports law issues of today’s sport”. The conference´s program is available here,
My presentation will deal with the competition law implications of the rules establishing the obligation for clubs to release players for international competitions. In essence, I will focus on the Oulmers and Asobal cases, that we already briefly discussed here on a previous post.
A very impressive line-up of speakers will be covering many other issues related to the application of competition law to the sports sector. If any of you is interested in this topic, I have been told that the discussions will be broadcasted online via the web page of the Hungarian Olympic Committee.
Thanks to Ádám Remetei-Filep and to Pal Szilágyi for their invitation.
THE RAID: An antitrust movie
In Chilling Competition we have devoted a number of posts to antitrust-related movies (see our previous posts on: “First ever Hollywood competition law movie?”; “OFT goes to Hollywood”, and, very specially, our nominations to the “Antitrust Oscars”). Given that all of those posts received a crazy amount of visits, we can reasonably presume that you too like this sort of videos.
Today Chilling Competition is proud to release a true gem, a “classic” on its own right that we have digitalized for our readers: The Raid.
In our opinion, The Raid is the best and funniest antitrust movie of all times. It has everything: it is a comedy with action, romance, and an educational purpose (it was filmed -a few years ago- as part of a compliance program for Neste).
If you think we’re not objective, then you’re absolutely right:
The Raid is directed and starred by very special actors to whom we profess great admiration: General Court’s Judge Marc van der Woude (who plays the character of Luc Desmet, a Commission inspector); Toni Huopalainen (who, in addition to being the scriptwriter, plays the role of European Commission official Tom Jenssen); and our friend and favorite competition lawyer Luis Ortiz Blanco (to see a moustached Luis in his role as a priest confessing a cartelist jump to minute 20.33).
A million thanks go to all three of them for granting us the permission to digitalize their movie and for their great sense of humor.
Enough for introductions…
(Only accessible on Chilling Competition’s youtube channel via this link).
Competition sound-alikes (2)
Yesterday, we missed a big one (tx to Sarah Long for the pointer):
John Davies (OECD) 
with John Davies (Freshfields) 
Competition sound-alikes
We work in a small community and, funnily enough, a number of esteemed colleagues share similar names.
So our readers avoid confusion at social events, here is a recap. Do not confuse:
Simon Bishop (RBB Econ) with Bill Bishop (CRA International) 
William Kolasky (WilmerHale) with William Kovacic (FTC ) 
Damien Geradin (Covington) with Damien Gerard (Louvain)
Mario Monti (former Commissioner) 
with Giorgio Monti (EUI) 
Peter Whelan (Uni East Anglia) and Anthony Whelan (EU Commission) 
Myself 
with a former Howrey chap, Nicholas Little (no kiddin’ here) 
Will come back tomorrow with a post on competition dynasties.
Promotion (including self-promotion)
Yesterday, I made my mom and dad very proud. I was interviewed by the French newspaper Liberation.
The interview is about credit rating agencies and competition law. It is a follow-up to my blog post a few days ago. See link below for the text or here on the blog of Jean Quatremer.
So much for the self-promotion: Garrigues decided to promote Alfonso to senior associate level! A fully deserved decision: Alfonso is one of the most promising, brightest and funniest AT lawyer out there. Congrats!
This makes his mom, dad and co-blogger very proud too.
Antitrust Quote of the Day
Neelie Kroes’s trademark has long been her tough public statements. I was not a great fan of that.
Now, while the master of DG COMP, she said something quite right about economic analysis: “[e]conometrics, for example, are a useful servant, but a terrible master.”
Here’s the source of the quote.
Slides – Course on EU competition law – Summer Program FUSL
Hereafter, I attach the slides I used yesterday for a lecture in the context of a summer program in EU and International Business Law.
I gave the lecture with D. Hull (Covington). Good fun. Next time, I’ll organize my party on a Friday, so that I feel even fresher the next Monday.
Thanks again to Prof. Strowel who invited me to give this lecture.
I understand that those materials may be of limited interest to our readers, who are all eminent experts of competition law. Yet the presentation contains a number of good pics.
Old Wine, New Bottles
In their 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines, the US agencies have poured old wine in new bottles.
The section on coordinated effects adds a theory of harm to standard tacit collusion analysis. It is entitled “parallel accomodating conduct“, and consists in:
“situations in which each rival’s response to competitive moves made by others is individually rational, and not motivated by retaliation or deterrence nor intended to sustain an agreed-upon market outcome, but nevertheless emboldens price increases and weakens competitive incentives to reduce prices or offer customers better terms. Coordinated interaction includes conduct not otherwise condemned by the antitrust laws” (see p.24).
My reaction: this looks familiar, and similar, to unilateral effects scenarios arising in oligopolies as a result of product/location differenciation or in cases of price leadership.
But aren’t those theories of harm already caught under merger control rules?
Moreover, shouldn’t unilateral and coordinated effects scenarios be mutually exclusive on a given relevant market? This also seems to be the view of DG COMP’s former chief economist.
The alternative explanation: an attempt of the US agencies to discretely relax the heavy evidentiary constraints required for a finding of coordinated effects?
PS: it is now summer time in Europe. Our friends keep harassing us with end afternoon drinks proposals at Brussels’ terrasses. For social reasons, Alfonso and I have thus decided to limit our posting pace to three stories a week in July. BTW, I heard through the grapevine that the Hogan Lovells party was huge (in very many respects…).
We want you!
Chillin’Competition currently has between 2,500 and 3,000 weekly readers.
However, “only” 100 of you are subscribed to the blog, and “only”142 of you have joined our LinkedIn group.
It is really useful for us to have some info on who the readers of the blog are, since it enables us to better target our posts. Subscriptors are immediately notified of new posts and their identity (or rather their email address) is only known by us. The LinkedIn group gives us the same info and also enables you to know who other readers are (in fact, the group is so far fulfilling its mission since it has proved useful in fostering some interaction amonsgt you).
So, a message to those who have not yet subscribed/joined the group: We want you!
Job Opportunities
Let’s put headhunters out of jobs :).
I heard on the grapevine that Covington and Burling Brussels is facing a huge stream of new business.
The downside is that current partners and associates are working ’round the clock. Since I have good friends, co-authors and university colleagues there, I am a little concerned.
Now, Covington and Burling is hiring junior and senior associates. I suppose you can send your application to one of the partners working on competition cases.
Chillin'Competition 