Peter Willis

For decades the Competition and Markets Authority ("CMA") and its predecessor, the Office of Fair Trading ("OFT"), have worked in symbiosis with the European Commission ("Commission") on competition law enforcement and merger investigations. Following the UK’s decision to leave the EU and at the (...)

Introduction The current Vertical Agreement Block Exemption Regulation (‘VBER’), has been in force since 2010, a mere ten years. Yet it is hard to think of another decade in which the commercial landscape has changed as dramatically. The gradual shift away from the high street to online sales (...)

In the last few years, franchising has become an increasingly popular distribution structure across the EU. A franchise is a vertical agreement, and therefore should not contain any of the hard-core restrictions set out in the VBER in order to benefit from the block exemption. Nonetheless, it (...)

The UK government has given the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) further powers to review mergers in strategically important sectors. These steps include making changes to the Enterprise Act 2002 (Enterprise Act) to provide the government with extended powers to scrutinise foreign (...)

On 4 June 2020, the Competition Markets Authority (“CMA”) announced that it had secured binding competition disqualification undertakings by Mr Amit Patel, not to act as a director of any UK company for five years from 13 July 2020, in consequence of his involvement in two separate (...)

The CMA has provisionally cleared Amazon and Deliveroo merger On 17 April 2020, the Competition and Markets Authority ("CMA") provisionally cleared the anticipated acquisition by Amazon of certain rights and a minority shareholding in Deliveroo. The CMA’s initial analysis of the merger (...)

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating four pharmacies and convenience stores for suspected breaches of competition law. The investigations, under Chapter II of the Competition Act 1998 (CA 98), relate to suspected charging of excessive and unfair prices for hand sanitiser (...)

The Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) is currently investigating Takeaway.com’s acquisition of UK-listed Just Eat for £5.9 billion (see link). Shares in the combined company, Just Eat Takeaway, started trading on 3 February. However, the CMA’s initial enforcement order prohibits the (...)

After conducting a full investigation in April 2018, the CMA on 22 January 2020, fined Fender Musical Instruments Europe Limited (Fender Europe), an international seller of guitar instruments, £4,521,185 (the largest fine imposed in the UK for resale price maintenance) for its infringement of (...)

In September 2019, the Competition Markets Authority ("CMA") found that Tobii’s acquisition of Smartbox resulted in or may result in a substantial lessening of competition in the UK assistive communication technology market and ordered Tobii to divest Smartbox. Tobii consequently appealed the (...)

On 12 November 2019, the Competition Appeal Tribunal ("Tribunal") upheld Ofcom’s decision against Royal Mail Plc (Royal Mail), finding Royal Mail’s pricing strategy in relation to bulk mail delivery services to be discriminatory and an abuse of dominance. Royal Mail first announced the (...)

On 31 October 2019, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales ("Court") handed down a significant judgment in relation to BritNed’s follow-on damages claim against a power cable cartel member, ABB. The Court allowed ABB’s cross-appeal in relation to cartel savings, finding that the High Court of (...)

On 3 October 2019 the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued a Statement of Objections (the “SO”) to three pharmaceutical companies over pay-for-delay agreements in the market for Addison’s disease treatment. In its SO the CMA sets out its provisional view that, in 2016, pharmaceutical (...)

On 14 August 2019 the Competition & Market Authority ("CMA") invited interested parties to comment on its intention to accept commitments from Aspen over an agreement that allegedly prevented the entry of a competing version of the drug fludrocortisone in the UK. The CMA suspected Aspen (...)

On 26 July 2019, the energy regulator published its decision , issued in May, fining two energy suppliers for agreeing not to target each other’s customers, and a third company for providing software to facilitate the collusion; the decision addresses a number of interesting substantive and (...)

In the context of increasing enforcement in the digital sector, the CMA published its Digital Markets Strategy ("DMS") in July 2019. It aims to ensure a level playing field where all businesses can compete on the merits of their offering. The DMS sets out strategic aims supported by the (...)

In recent years, the UK CMA has focussed many of its investigations on the pharmaceutical sector. This is partly due to the fact that in the UK, the National Health Service is a public funded body which bears most of the cost of the majority of medicines. Therefore, going after anti-competitive (...)

On 17 April 2018, the CMA carried out a dawn raid at the premises of Fender Musical Instruments Europe Limited ("Fender"), a guitar manufacturer based in England, launching an investigation under Chapter I of the Competition Act 1998 ("CA98") and Article 101 TFEU. Section 27 of the CA98 gives (...)

Sainsbury’s and Asda are the second and third largest grocery retailers in the UK respectively, and represent two of the four largest online retailers of delivered goods in the UK. Their networks include supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol filling stations. Both parties also retail (...)

In the event of a UK competition law infringement, the CMA can seek a Competition Disqualification Order ("CDO") for up to 15 years against (i) any director of company who has committed a breach of competition law and (ii) if the court considers that the individual’s conduct as a director makes (...)

A decision of the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), made in December but published on 22 January, concluded that an aircraft wet lease, together with the transfer of slots and customer relationships, should be treated as a merger under UK merger rules. This is the first such (...)