TRENDS : COMPETITION LAW - COMPLIANCE PROGAMS - COMPANIES - ENFORCEMENT POLICIES OF 16 COUNTRIES

Best practices for compliance programs: Results of an international survey

KEYWORDS

All companies should employ competition law compliance progams in an attempt to ensure their their employees will follow these complicated laws. Yet, enforcers’ support for competition law compliance programs is wildly inconsistent. A few provide guidance about compliance, and will consider a sincerely implemented compliance program to be a mitigating factor. But many will not give credit to a "failed" compliance program. We survey the enforcement policies of 16 countries and the European Union with regard to competition law compliance programs.

Compliance programs Competition law compliance programs and government support or indifference Theodore Banks President, Compliance and Competition Consultants, LLC; Attorney at law, Schoeman, Updike &Kaufman, LLP, Chicago Nathalie Jalabert-Doury Avocat à la cour, Mayer Brown, Paris 1. Companies employ compliance programs for a simple reason: to prevent the company from violating the law. However, it immediately gets more complicated, since a company exists only on paper. The people in a company are the ones that actually take the actions that violate the law, and in the course of so doing may get themselves and the company into legal trouble. 2. The competition laws exist because we have learned that society benefits from competition. But achieving competition is not easy.

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