This post sets out one way to analyse evidence in cartel cases. It is probably of most interest to people in competition authorities but may also be of interest to anyone who has to put a complex story together from many pieces of evidence. There are certainly ways this can be improved, and completely different – and likely better – ways to do this, but this is the best I know so far. This approach works well for three distinct steps of handling a cartel case: the investigative stage where you need to analyse, summarise and further investigate the evidence; the review stage where you need to look at the evidence, check for consistency, gaps so on; and the writing […]
Do the fining rules treat small companies badly? This is an occasional criticism of the 2006 Guidelines on Fines. Is it accurate? Let’s take an intentionally simplified example. Nine companies each have value of sales of 10m euros per year in a product which they cartelise. All are equally culpable (no aggravating or mitigating circumstances to take into account), save for the duration of their participation in the cartel – three had a short duration, three medium, and three long. The only other relevant difference between the companies is their total worldwide turnover; similarly three had a small turnover, three medium, three long. This gives us nine different companies which we can group – for example – by their worldwide […]
I’ll be speaking together with Johan Ysewyn at this conference on cartel developments over the last 12 months. You can take a look at the slides from the last conference here.
GCR has an interview with Judge Forwood – subscribers only I’m afraid – which touches on a number of issues of competition, and more specifically, cartel, enforcement, in particular the evolving nature of the enforcement system now that public and private enforcement are increasingly intertwined. Worth reading in particular for comments on the standard of judicial review, on publications of Commission decisions, and on lengths of proceedings at both Commission and Court level.
