Antitrust issues are very much alive in the New Zealand grocery sector, arising in a number of contexts, including: (i) merger approvals, (ii) abuse in relation to demand-side market power, and (iii) fair trading, each of which is discussed below. And given an established supermarket duopoly in New Zealand, …read more
Competition in the Australian grocery retail industry has been a focus of Australian media, politics, and regulatory activity for several years. Given that the actions of Australia’s largest grocery retailers have a significant impact on small business, primary producers, and consumers, Coles and Woolworths have been subject to increasingly strident …read more
In recent years the U.K. grocery and food industries have been among the most scrutinized sectors by the U.K. competition authorities. This article reports on competition law enforcement activity in the United Kingdom under the antitrust rules and also the so-called market investigation regime (merger control is outside its scope). …read more
During the Obama Administration, the U.S. competition authorities have made food and agriculture a priority for antitrust enforcement. These efforts, undertaken by both the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Competition of the Federal Trade Commission, have concentrated primarily on preventing anticompetitive harm to buyers …read more