Thomas Oster is a partner at Bird & Bird. He is specialised in competition law, having significant experience in helping clients to avoid competition law pitfalls and representing them in proceedings before the competition authorities. Thomas is a partner in the Competition & EU practice, based in Paris. His practice covers both contentious and non-contentious national and European competition law, together with commercial and distribution law. Thomas has substantial experience of advising on cartel investigations and assisting companies in preparing leniency applications before the European Commission and the French Competition Authority. He helps to develop and implement competition compliance programs and provides assistance in notifications of transactions to the European Commission under the EC Merger Regulation and to the French Competition Authority. Thomas’ experience of competition law covers different angles, having worked in practice, in house and having done an internship at the French Competition Authority. On the commercial side, Thomas has experience of advising clients on the structuring of selective, exclusive or franchise distribution networks across Europe, as well as advising on supplier-distributors relationships and sales regulations. He also regularly assists clients in relation to product liability issues. Thomas regularly participates in seminars and conferences. He is a member of the association of competition law practitioners (APDC) and also of the French association for the study of competition Law (AFEC). Admitted to the Paris Bar in 2000, Thomas holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Competition Law from the Faculty of Economics of Rennes, an LL.M in International Business from the University of Manchester and an LL.B in European Business law from the Faculty of law of Strasbourg. He speaks French and English.
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The French Competition Authority (“FCA”) has recently published its annual report for 2020. The study provides a summary of the 2020’s major cases and gives an overview of the FCA’s focus for the coming years. During this year marked by the Covid-19 crisis, the report highlights the FCA’s sustained (...)
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On 26 May this year, a presidential ordinance (the Ordinance) perfected the transposition into French law of the ECN+ European Directive of 11 December 2018, which aims to strengthen the powers of national competition authorities and increase their effectiveness. Several provisions of the (...)
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On 29 April The French Competition Authority (FCA) published its report on the Fintech sector. This report follows its payment sector inquiry launched in January 2020, which primarily focused on the disruption brought by new technologies and new market players. In this report the Authority (...)
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While the ECN+ Directive is about to be transposed into French law, which will result in exposing professional bodies to potentially much heavier sanctions than under the current legal framework, the French Competition Authority (FCA) recently published a study on how competition rules apply to (...)
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On 20 January 2021, the criminal chamber of the French Supreme Court held that in the context of a dawn raid carried out by a competition authority, all attorney-client correspondence relating to the right of defence is protected and therefore exempt from seizure. Contrary to what previous (...)
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It is well known that a total ban of online sales constitutes a hardcore restriction of passive sales and is qualified as a restriction of competition by object. This was clearly stated by the EU Commission in its 2010 guidelines and confirmed by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the (...)
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The French Competition Authority (FCA) recently published its new merger control guidelines which came into force on 23 July 2020 and replaced the previous ones adopted back in 2013. The adoption of these new guidelines follows a series of public consultations (the last one took place at the (...)
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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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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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The European Commission’s decision to block the Siemens-Alstom mega-merger in February 2019 provoked the anger of the French and German governments that had backed the deal. They accused the Commission of playing against the interests of the European economy by preventing the emergence of a (...)
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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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