Antitrust Lawyer Blog

Last week, the newly-established UK Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”), its main anti-trust and consumer protection agency, announced an advisory process to provide guidance to businesses on the application of competition law to potential horizontal and vertical agreements raising novel or unresolved issues has been put into practice. The “Short-form Opinion” (“SfO”) tool has been launched on…

On April 10, 2014, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) announced that it will end its litigation against Ardagh Group SA’s $1.7 billion acquisition of Saint-Gobain Containers, Inc.’s U.S. bottling operations, after the former agreed to divest six of its nine glass container plants in the United States. The case began when the FTC requested for…

On April 8, 2014, China’s Insurance Regulatory Commission (“CIRC”) announced that it is relaxing merger and acquisition (M&A) rules in the insurance industry. Specifically, CIRC scrapped the rule that would previously limit insurers from buying more than one peer that competes in the same market segment. This move has been welcomed by both domestic and…

A recently-appointed Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) official has reportedly responded to criticism that the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) is in conflict with federal antitrust law, writing a letter to the New York Times earlier this week to defend the interaction of the legislative areas. Martin Gaynor of the FTC Bureau of Economics wrote a letter…

On March 20, 2014, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) issued a statement on violations of rules on reporting mergers. The statement announced that starting on May 1, 2014, MOFCOM will publish on its website a list of all offenders who fail to report mergers in violation of the Anti-Monopoly Law, on top of existing…

On March 17, 2014, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) sought comments from antitrust lawyers on draft rules for its long-awaited simplified merger review procedure in a meeting behind close doors. Attendees reported that MOFCOM showed a much simplified notification form, which could significantly reduce the burden of proof companies have to provide to MOFCOM…

On March 5, 2014, the FTC announced that it has stepped up its enforcement efforts of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. According to FTC’s press release, while its debt collection efforts in the past have focused on research and consumer education, the Commission has focused on law enforcement efforts in recent years, especially after…

On February 27, China’s Ministry of Commerce (“MOFCOM”) announced that it cleared 207 merger review cases in the administrative year of 2013, an increase of 26% over the numbers in 2012. During the same time period, the number of merger filings increased by 8%, while the number of accepted cases increased by 12.8%, to 212.…

On February 26, the Director of the Anti-Monopoly Bureau at the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (“MOFCOM”), Ming Shang, said in a press release that MOFCOM will focus on anti-monopoly legislation this year. Shang said one task facing MOFCOM would be the formulation of support measures to the “Interim Rule Regarding the Applicable Standards of Simple…

On February 26, 2014, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) cleared Samsung with no penalty of an accusation made by rival Apple that it has abused its dominance, according a commission press release. Apple had alleged that Samsung’s prolific litigation against Apple over patents constituted an abuse of dominance. But the KFTC said Samsung’s lawsuits did…