This paper aims at highlighting the Commission's approach towards the relation between sector specific regulation and general competition law, especially concerning energy markets and the road to Internal Market objective.We firstly present Trinko case, in order to focus on two crucial and...

This paper examines the controlling role of European competition law in the energy market restructuring in EU after the gradual liberalisation process of previous years and defines the application of European competition law to this framework of restructuring. The particular focus of this paper...

While the Commission has stood its ground against political pressure to relax enforcement for the purpose of grooming European champions, that does not mean only economic welfare arguments have been accepted under competition law. Rather, over the years a pattern has emerged whereby, in the...

Has the antitrust arsenal run out of novel theories or weapons? Think again. Recent scholarship has come to challenge conventional wisdom with the latest target of antitrust imagination being institutional investors, including diversified index funds. New economic research suggests that common...

The literature shows that horizontal shareholding engenders significant anticompetitive effects and that no suitable instrument exists within European competition law which reliably and effectively can be applied to curtail such intrinsic effects. This Article analyses several proposals which...

These two papers look at recent decisions and controversies surrounding the counterfactual test under s 36 of the New Zealand Commerce Act 1986, and s46 of the Australian Competition and Consumer Act 2010 respectively. In 2010 the New Zealand Supreme Court in 0867 affirmed the counterfactual as...

While the issuing of loans to companies is a core functionality of modern banking, the size, or risk, of a request can exceed the limits, or appetite, of a single bank giving ground for syndication where the funding comes from a collegium of lenders. This not only provides better risk...

Governments around the world spend an estimated $9.5 trillion of public money purchasing goods and services each year (public procurement). Not only does this represent a significant proportion of government expenditure (29.1 percent on average in OECD countries) and of total gross domestic...

Under EU competition law it is prohibited to conclude anti-competitive agreements. If found, such conduct warrants fines in the millions. How-ever, little guidance on what to consider restrictive practices are available from the relevant statute, referring the matter to case law. Here a pattern...