Financial services and competition law: An overview of EU and national case law

A. Introduction For the first time, EU and national competition authorities over the last few years have expanded their scrutiny to the financial sector as a whole (banks, financial markets, insurance). All areas of financial services appear to be on their radar, as exemplified by investigations looking into syndicated loans, credit cards, benchmarks (such as LIBOR), commission rates in asset management and coinsurance. As this article will explain, all kinds of agreements and practices have been investigated and penalised by competition authorities in Europe over the past few years. Competition authorities have certainly not shied away from assessing sophisticated types of financial operation or scheme. They have also examined the market conduct of investment banks (with cases involving