Mary Hecht focuses her practice on EU competition and antitrust matters. Before joining McDermott, Mary worked in a wealth management firm. She was an intern in several French law firms specialized in competition law and also interned at Samsung Electronics and at Euro Disney.
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By a decision dated 12 April 2022, the French Competition Authority (FCA) fined the Compagnie Financière Européenne de Prises de Participation (“Cofepp”) up to 7 million euros, for having closed the takeover of the company Marie Brizard Wine & Spirits (i) without first notifying the operation (...)
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On March 11, 2022, the Paris Court of Appeals overturned in its entirety a May 31, 2019 judgment of the Paris Commercial Court, which had ordered Google to compensate an advertiser, Ulysse Service (’Ulysse’), for the abrupt termination of established commercial relationships. In this case, the (...)
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The NSI Act replaces the system of discretionary public interest intervention in mergers by the UK government under the UK Enterprise Act and creates a new mandatory notification system operated by the Investment Security Unit (ISU), part of the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial (...)
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On December 21, 2021, the CMA updated its guidance on interim measures in merger investigations and the initial enforcement order template. Interim measures take three forms, which depend on the stage of the investigation and whether they are imposed on the merging parties or agreed between (...)
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IAG, owner of leading airlines in Ireland, Spain and the UK, sought to acquire Air Europa from Globalia and provided notification of the transaction to the Commission in May 2021. IAG, owner of Iberia and Vueling, is the largest airline in Spain and Air Europa is the third-largest airline in (...)
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On December 14, 2021, the Commission conditionally cleared in Phase I Veolia’s acquisition of Suez. The Commission deemed Veolia’s comprehensive commitments sufficient to assuage the Commission’s competition concerns, without the need for a Phase 2 investigation. The Commission found that the (...)
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Google’s flagship product is the Google search engine, which provides search results to consumers, who pay for the service with their data. Almost 90% of Google’s revenues stem from adverts, such as those it shows consumers in response to a search query. In 2004, Google entered the separate (...)
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In October 2021, the European Commission imposed interim measures on Illumina and GRAIL to restore and maintain competition between the entities following Illumina’s decision to close its acquisition of GRAIL prior to the Commission completing its review of the transaction and in breach of the (...)
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The EC’s review of Illumina’s acquisition of GRAIL raises two novel issues: the assertion of jurisdiction by the EC over transactions that do not meet any national or EU jurisdictional merger control tests, and the use of interim measures to stop parties closing a transaction where the EC has (...)
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On October 25, 2021, the FTC announced a return to the practice of including prior approval provisions in consent decrees for allegedly anticompetitive mergers. This means that in addition to divesting a business, the FTC is requiring companies to obtain FTC prior approval before purchasing any (...)
183
In May 2020, Facebook purchased Giphy, the largest provider of GIFs (a format for image files that supports both animated and static images). Giphy operates an online database and search engine that primarily allows users to search and share GIFs and can be used indirectly on third-party apps, (...)
46
On 3 June 2021, the CJEU issued a judgment rejecting Recylex’s appeal against the GCEU’s dismissal of Recylex’s challenge to the EC’s infringement decision in the car battery recycling cartel. By this decision the EC rejected Recylex’s request for an increase in leniency reduction beyond the level (...)
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By decision of 20 May 2021, the EC found that Bank of America, Natixis, Nomura, RBS (now NatWest), UBS, UniCredit and WestLB (now Portigon) breached EU antitrust rules through the participation of a group of traders in a cartel on the primary and secondary markets for European Government Bonds (...)
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On 3 May 2021, the EC fined Sigma-Aldrich EUR 7.5 million for providing incorrect or misleading information during the EC’s review of Merck’s planned acquisition of the company. Background On 21 April 2015, Merck notified the EC of its plan to acquire Sigma-Aldrich. On 15 June 2015, the EC (...)
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On 20 April 2021, the EC issued its settlement decision by which it fined Deutsche Bahn (DB) and Société Nationale des Chemins de fer belges/Nationale Maatschappij der Belgische Spoorwegen (SNCB) a total of approximately EUR 48 million for participating in a cross-border customer allocation (...)
47
On 24 June 2015, the EC fined 10 manufacturers of retail food packaging trays a total of EUR 115.8 million for having participated in a single and continuous infringement consisting of five separate cartels aimed at fixing prices, allocating customers and markets, bid-rigging and exchanging (...)
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On 25 March 2021, the CJEU dismissed all the appeals brought by Danish pharmaceutical company H. Lundbeck A/S and five generic manufacturers against the judgments of the GCEU, thus upholding a decision of the EC on patent settlement agreements between Lundbeck and five generic manufacturers (...)
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On 18 March 2021, the CJEU ruled on the appeal by Pometon SpA against the GCEU’s judgment in the steel abrasives cartel case. The CJEU ruled that the GCEU had breached the principle of equal treatment when recalculating the EC’s fine imposed on Pometon, the only non-settling party in this case. (...)
81
On 27 January 2021, the GCEU confirmed the EC’s decision declaring the merger of the two main Dutch cable operators, Ziggo N.V. and Liberty Global Plc, compatible with the internal market, thus rejecting the action introduced by their competitor, KPN BV, a provider of retail television offers (...)
58
On 20 January 2021, the EC fined Valve Corporation and five publishers, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media and ZeniMax, a total of EUR 7.9 million for breaching antitrust rules by partitioning the EEA market. Background Valve, together with the five publishers, restricted (...)
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On 17 December 2020, the EC rejected Suez’s gun-jumping claim and provided further clarifications on the scope of the exemption to the standstill obligation in the case of two-step acquisitions encompassing a public bid. Background On 30 August 2020, the French company Veolia announced its (...)
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