Jonas Koponen

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (“SAIC”) recently published on its website details of a case brought by the Administration for Industry & Commerce (“AIC”) of Jiangsu Province against a local construction materials and machinery association and its respective members for (...)

On 7 January 2011, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (“SAIC”) published three substantive Regulations on enforcement of the Anti- Monopoly Law (“AML”), regarding Monopolistic Agreements, Abuse of Dominance and Abuse of Administrative Powers. In May 2009 and May 2010, SAIC (...)

In a statement on 4 January 2011, the PRC National Development and Reform Commission (the ”NDRC”), the department in charge of price administration, announced that it has fined the Paper Manufacture Industry Association in Fuyang City, Zhejiang Province RMB 500,000 for organising a cartel. (...)

The European Commission has revised its rules for the assessment of co- operation agreements between competitors, so called horizontal co-operation agreements. The new rules consist of two updated Block Exemption Regulations covering R&D and specialisation / joint production agreements and (...)

On 13 August 2010, the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (“MOFCOM”) issued a conditional approval for the proposed acquisition of Alcon (“Alcon”) by Novartis AG (“Novartis”). The decision was issued after a merger review of just under four months (one month for Phase One (...)

On July 1, 2010, the General Court ruled in an appeal against the European Commission’s first ever finding of abuse of a dominant position by a pharma company. The Court has broadly upheld a Decision the Commission itself characterised as “novel”, but reduced the €60 million fine on (...)

Recent developments MOFCOM, the agency charged with merger review pursuant to the Chinese Antimonopoly Law, has recently accelerated the process of building the merger control regime in China. More specifically, as regards the substantive and procedural framework for merger review, MOFCOM is (...)

On 30 June 2008, the European Commission introduced a new settlement procedure for cartel cases. Under the new procedure, the parties in a cartel investigation may acknowledge their breach of European antitrust law and waive certain procedural rights in exchange for a 10% reduction of the (...)

The PRC Anti-monopoly Law (promulgated on 30 August 2007 and effective on 1 August 2008) regulates monopolistic conduct which has the effect of eliminating or restricting market competition within the PRC. One type of monopolistic conduct regulated by the PRC Anti-monopoly Law (the "AML") is (...)

On 26 October 2007, the European Commission initiated a public consultation on a new settlement procedure in cartel cases. The procedure outlined in the Commission’s proposal is aimed at making the Commission’s investigations more efficient. Public comments are due by 21 December 2007 and the (...)