Frédéric Pradelles

On August 1, 2022 the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) gave a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of the product scope of a cartel found to exist by the EU Commission (EC) in its Decision dated July 19, 2016, C (2016) 4673 final, in Case AT.39824 – Trucks (the Decision). This Decision led (...)

The GCEU upheld the decision of the EC accepting a referral request from France, as joined by other Member States, asking it to assess the proposed acquisition of GRAIL by Illumina (Judgment of July 13, 2022, Case T-227/21, Illumina, Inc ; v Commission). Background On September 21, 2020, (...)

Summary The CJEU on June 16, 2022, partially annulled a EC decision due to a procedural breach, whilst maintaining the imposed EUR 116 million fine. The CJEU found that the EC’s decision did not give the companies opportunity to rebut all infringements separately. At the same time, the (...)

On June 15, 2022, the EU General Court (GCEU) annulled the EU Commission’s (EC) decision C (2018) 240 final dated January 24, 2018 in Case AT.40220 in which the EC had imposed a fine of EUR 997.439 million on Qualcomm Inc. (Qualcomm) for having allegedly abused its dominant position on the (...)

In last year’s EU Competition Review, we reported on the draft of the new Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (VBER). On June 1, 2022, the new VBER finally entered into force. At the same time, the EC published a revised version of the accompanying Vertical Guidelines. These two instruments (...)

On June 27, 2019, the EC imposed two fines totaling EUR 28 million on Canon in the context of its acquisition of Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation (TMSC). The first fine of EUR 14 million was levied for Canon’s failure to notify the EC prior to the implementation of the transaction in (...)

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 (...)

Procedural and Factual Background On November 9, 2010, the EU Commission (EC) imposed fines (totaling nearly EUR 800 million) on multiple air freight carriers for their participation in the “air freight cartel” (the 2010 Decision). The case was opened following an immunity application made (...)

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 (...)

At the start of the year, companies offering or considering offering rebates were given further guidance on the limits of such practices. The GCEU’s judgment of January 26, 2022 annulled the EUR 1.06 billion fine against Intel Corporation (Intel) in the 2009 EC decision. The judgment is the (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)

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 (...)