It is important to remember that as businesses struggle in these times to cope with issues like distribution, sourcing ingredients, components and other resources, they may look to collaborate with rivals.   In fact, many businesses have been doing exactly that.  Collaboration between competitors can be perfectly benign and may no anti-competitive effects (for example, in setting standards, lobbying efforts).  However, competition rules do apply and coordination of prices, market sharing, cost allocation, coordinated output reductions…

Perhaps the first authority to warn about the perceived risks, the UK’s CMA issued a warning on 6rh March 2020 to traders about taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic.  CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli said: “We urge retailers to behave responsibly throughout the coronavirus outbreak and not to make misleading claims or charge vastly inflated prices. We also remind members of the public that these obligations may apply to them too if they resell goods,…

In recent months we have seen a number of horizontal mergers being scrutinized under national and EU merger rules. Since the fall-out from the Siemens/Alstom merger refusal, we have also seen a number of ministers from member states, including Poland, France and Germany, call for increased tolerance and indeed support for the emergence of so-called ‘national champions’. Recently in March there have been calls for companies to ‘reshore’ operations which they had outsourced to other…

On January 30, 2020, The European Commission fined a group of companies belonging to the Comcast Group, including NBCUniversal, €14.327 million for illegally restricting sales of film merchandise products in Europe. The fine already includes a 30% reduction that was awarded for NBCUniversal cooperating with the European Commission beyond what is required by law.…

On January 31, the UK exited the EU, after more than three years of constitutional turmoil. The UK now embarks on a year of transition and negotiations as it heads out into a world of new trade relations, with opportunities and challenges in equal measure. This is a watershed moment for all companies who trade in or out of the UK or the EU. Whether trading in goods or services, companies face strategic re-assessments not…