Tristan Jones

Recovering penalties from directors and employees: Safeway revisited* Can a company which has been fined for anticompetitive conduct seek to recover the fine from the directors and employees responsible by suing them for damages? The question is moot in light of last week’s Supreme Court (...)

Eurotunnel: when buying assets is a merger* When is an asset acquisition a merger? As the Eurotunnel litigation shows, the answer is not clear-cut. The background is the 2011 liquidation of the cross-channel ferry company SeaFrance. It could not be sold as a going concern, so instead there (...)

Skyscanner: CAT quashes commitments in the online booking sector* In a judgment handed down on Friday, the Competition Appeal Tribunal has quashed the Office of Fair Trading’s decision to accept commitments in the online hotel booking sector. As the first case to consider such commitments, (...)

Non-Appealing Cartelists Beware* Tucked away at the back of last week’s Supreme Court decision on time-limits for follow-on claims is a very important development for private competition actions. The context is section 47A of the Competition Act 1998, a provision which has generated an (...)

Tobacco decision: the Court of Appeal emphasises finality* The Court of Appeal yesterday delivered a judgment that should finally draw a line under one of the Office of Fair Trading’s more troublesome cases – and which will presumably bring a great sigh of relief from the Competition and Markets (...)

Canadian Supreme Court: No such thing as passing on defence* On Thursday last week the Supreme Court of Canada handed down three much-anticipated judgments concerning indirect purchaser claims. The trio of cases point towards a distinctive, and in many respects more claimant-friendly, approach (...)

The Competition Commission’s power to block transactions outside the UK* The judgment in Akzo Nobel NV v Competition Commission [2013] CAT 13 is an important decision on the ability of the Competition Commission (“CC”) to block transactions between companies outside of the UK. However, neither (...)

UK government proposes “streamlining” regulatory and competition appeals* The UK government on 19 June 2013 published a consultation on streamlining regulatory and competition appeals. The press spin was that the proposals are all about preventing “armies of lawyers” from blocking (...)

Private enforcement: the Commission speaks at last* The trio of documents published by the Commission last week mark an important moment in private competition enforcement in the EU. After years of debate and consultation, it is now clear that, whilst the Commission is determined to take some (...)

Albion v Dwr Cymru: Incompetence and counterfactuals* The Competition Appeal Tribunal today delivered that rarest of beasts: a judgment awarding damages in a follow-on claim. After its decade-long fight, Albion Water has been awarded around £2 million for Dŵr Cymru’s abuse of dominant position in (...)

The OFT’s tobacco decision: Is it dead yet?* Late in 2011, the Office of Fair Trading was forced to concede before the Competition Appeal Tribunal that it could no longer defend the theory of harm contained in its Decision on alleged pricing agreements between tobacco manufacturers and (...)

Collective Actions: loss in complex cases* The big news from last week’s UK announcement on reforming private competition enforcement is that the government plans to introduce opt-out class actions for competition claims. The proposals incorporate various “safeguards” designed to ensure that the (...)

Tesco scores partial victory in cheese cartel* In a judgment handed down this afternoon, the Competition Appeal Tribunal largely upheld Tesco’s appeal against the OFT’s decision that it had participated in unlawful agreements relating to the price of cheese: see Tesco Stores Ltd v Office of Fair (...)

BCL No.2: The Supreme Court addresses time limits in follow-on claims* The White Paper which first proposed follow-on damages claims promised a “swift” and “streamlined” procedure. The idea was that when a regulator had made an infringement finding, there would be a simple way for victims to claim (...)

Supreme Court puts brake on “Euro defences”* The UK Supreme Court has given trade mark proprietors reason to celebrate, in a judgment which is likely to have important consequences for the success of “Euro defences” more broadly. See: Oracle America Inc (formerly Sun Microsystems Inc) v M-Tech (...)

Ex ante and ex post regulation following Telefónica* Hats off to Spain for having the nerve to suggest that it might have been a better target for the Commission’s attention than Telefónica, the former monopoly telecoms provider recently fined over €150 million for committing a margin squeeze in (...)