Florence is a Counsel in the Paris office, specialising in both competition law and ethics and compliance. As a member of the Competition & EU practice, she assists clients in all areas of French and EU competition law ranging from cartel investigations to dominance issues as well as merger control and dawn raids. Since joining Bird & Bird in 2015, she has been involved in high profile matters in particular proceedings before the French Competition Authority, with a strong focus on the telecoms sector. She has started her career in Brussels as a competition law associate of a ’Magic Circle’ law firm, she also has a deep knowledge of EU and international competition law. A few years ago, she decided to strengthen her expertise in ethics and compliance and passed a certificate of Leading Professional in Ethics and Compliance. Since then, she regularly assists clients in the development and implementation of their competition and anti-bribery compliance programmes as well as their whistleblowing systems, carrying out gap analysis, risk assessment, risk mapping, trainings, drafting whistleblowing policies, etc. She has worked as an in-house for a number of international companies (AB InBev, L’Oréal and Orange), she has a very good understanding of the needs of in-house legal departments and the level of service needed from private practice lawyers.
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2020 proves to be a busy year for the French Competition Authority (FCA) as far as tech giants are concerned. After Google and Apple, it’s now Sony’s turn to be under the FCA’s spotlight. While the Japanese company is currently launching pre-orders for its new PlayStation 5, the FCA has just (...)
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Nearly a month after issuing its new merger control guidelines, the French Competition Authority (FCA) broke new ground in merger control by issuing a blocking decision on 28 August 2020, against the joint takeover of a local hypermarket by undertakings of a competing retail group. The FCA (...)
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E-commerce is an essential distribution channel with specific features to which the competition authorities had to adapt. Reflections on the impact of e-commerce has never been more relevant than today, as the global COVID-19 health crisis has boosted online sales. In this context, the French (...)
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On 9 April 2020, the FCA imposed interim measures on Google, ordering the big tech giant to negotiate in good faith with press publishers and news agencies the remuneration associated to the use of their content based on transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria. These interim (...)
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On 16 March 2020, the French Competition Authority (FCA) imposed a €1.1 billion fine on Apple, the highest fine ever handed out to a company. The FCA considered that Apple had engaged in three anticompetitive practices with its distributors in the retail market for Apple products (excluding (...)
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As part of its discussions at international level on the reform of competition law, the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) recently published a paper providing food for thought on how merger control and anticompetitive practices concepts should be adapted to the digital sector. Regarding (...)
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Since 2017, the French Competition Authority (FCA) has been working on the simplification and modernisation of merger control in France, which resulted in particular in: (i) several public consultations on new guidelines aiming at replacing the current ones in the course of 2020; (ii) a new (...)
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A new development in the judicial saga around the 2010 decision by which the FCA imposed a EUR 384.9 million fine on 11 French banks for agreeing on the introduction of unjustified interbank fees during the transition towards a new digital system for processing checks. On 29 January 2020, the (...)
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The French Competition Authority (“FCA”) published in mid-January its priorities for 2020 which include in particular the competition issues in the digital sector, a focus on the environment and sustainable development, competition advocacy with a strong focus on trade associations and unions and (...)
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On 19 December 2019, the French Competition Authority ("FCA") fined Google for abusing its dominant position in the French search advertising market. The decision follows a complaint from Gibmedia (a company which publishes weather information, company data and telephone information) after (...)
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Last month, the French Competition Authority ("FCA") and the Bundeskartellamt ("BKA") published a joint study on algorithms and their potential implications from a competition law standpoint. This study presents the results of nearly a year and a half of collaborative work between the two (...)
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The French Competition Authority (FCA) has recently launched a public consultation to gather feedback on its draft revised merger control guidelines. The new guidelines aim at replacing the current merger control guidelines which were adopted back in 2013. The adoption of these new guidelines - (...)
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The flour cartels judicial saga began in 2012 with a decision from the French Competition Authority (“the FCA”) under which it imposed a €242.6 million fine on 17 French and German companies for setting up a cross-border cartel between German and French millers between 2002 and 2008, and a (...)
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On 22 May 2019, the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) imposed a EUR 900,000 fine on Akka Technologies (“AT”) for dawn raid obstruction, a first for the FCA. Since 2008, the FCA can impose a fine of up to 1% of a company’s highest worldwide turnover for obstructing its investigations. The FCA (...)
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On 18 April 2019, the French government adopted a decree ("Decree") introducing several measures aimed at modernizing and simplifying the notification of mergers to the French Competition Authority ("FCA"). The Decree, which came into force on 21 April 2019, has been preceded by a public (...)
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On March 25th 2019, the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) issued – on its own initiative - an opinion in which it advises against the 7.7 % increase in the tariffs of regulated retail electricity proposed by the French energy regulator (“CRE”) in a ruling adopted in February 2019. The FCA raised (...)
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On 21 February 2019, the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) published its opinion regarding the forthcoming reform of the audiovisual regulatory framework, at the request of the French National Assembly. The current framework imposes significant obligations on French TV operators, consisting (...)
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Following an in-depth investigation, the European Commission (“EC”) decided on 6 February 2019 to prohibit Siemens’ proposed acquisition of Alstom. According to the EC the combining of Siemens’ and Alstom’s transport equipment and services in a new company fully controlled by Siemens would have (...)
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On January 31st 2019, the French Competition Authority (“the FCA”) imposed interim measures on Google following a complaint lodged in May 2018 by Amadeus (a company offering directory enquiry services) alleging that Google had abused its dominant position on the online search advertising market (...)
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