Jurisdiction – UK

Subscribe to Jurisdiction – UK

On March 8, 2022, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its decision to accept commitments offered by Gridserve (the owner of The Electric Company Limited) and three motorway service area (MSA) operators: Roadchef, MOTO and Extra.  This article considers the background and implications of the CMA’s enforcement action against the parties.
…
Continue Reading The CMA Investigation into EV Chargepoint Operators and Net Zero

‘State aid’ is the term we would hear or read on a daily basis during the Brexit negotiations. The media described it as one of the ‘make or break’ issues which neither party, the UK or the EU, was willing to find the middle ground to land on. Now a year later since the end of the transition period, the term ‘subsidy’ has replaced ‘State aid’ in the context of public authorities awarding financial assistance.

This note considers what has been happening to the UK’s subsidy control post-Brexit and further provides an overview of the UK’s proposed new subsidy control regime.…

Continue Reading The UK’s Proposed New Subsidy Control Regime: Will it Work?

Last month, we held a webinar to discuss the modernisation of the EU’s distribution block exemption (the ‘VBER’) and of the UK’s own approach to this: the ‘VBEO’).   Economic principles increasingly need to be woven into the commercial application of the competition rules by businesses and we were pleased to have with us Dr Claudio Calcagno, Director at GMT Economics.  For those who were not able to participate in the webinar, here is a link to the recording.  We compared the EU approach with the expected UK approach and discussed a number of key developments.  Highlights from the webinar include:
…
Continue Reading Webinar Recap – Vertical Agreements in the EU and UK: How to Navigate the New Competition Law Landscape

Despite the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, the EU Vertical Agreement Block Exemption Regulation (retained VABER) continues to offer a safe harbor with respect to potentially anti-competitive vertical or supply agreements with an effect on trade within the UK. In this Alert, Steptoe’s EU Competition Team analyses the UK Competition and Market Authority’s recently issued…

The following note highlights certain barriers to free trade flows between the UK and the EU that have arisen in the post-Brexit era, with particular reference to rules of origin and origin procedures. It assesses the consequences these new rules will have in determining market power, influencing supply chain practices, and the application of UK and EU competition law in the future.
…
Continue Reading EU/UK Trade Post-Brexit: Rules of Origin and Their Impact on Competition Law

On June 9, 2020, the UK Competition Markets Authority (CMA) served an initial enforcement order under section 72(2) of the Enterprise Act 2002 on Facebook in relation to their completed acquisition of Giphy.

The CMA has explained in a statement that the proposed investigation would explore whether the acquisition might result in “a substantial lessening of competition in any market or markets in the UK.” The UK merger system is a voluntary one, even where the transaction meets the qualification tests for merger review by the CMA. If a qualifying transaction is not notified, the CMA has the power to require parties to suspend implementation, pending a merger review.…

Continue Reading UK Competition Authority Enquiry into Facebook’s Acquisition of Giphy

The CMA has provided guidance on its expected approach to merger assessments during the Covid-19 pandemic. While the timescales and substantive assessment of a merger’s effects on competition remain unchanged, the CMA has made a number of adjustments to its working arrangements in order to meet deadlines and progress cases. However, it is likely that some aspects of investigations may be subject to some delay.
…
Continue Reading CMA Guidance on its Approach to Merger Assessments during the COVID-19 Pandemic

In a series of recent statements, the UK Financial Conduct Authority  (FCA) has set out how it expects the insurance industry to help consumers and businesses affected by the coronavirus.

The FCA would like to see a degree of consistency across the industry in how business interruption claims are handled. To help to achieve such consistency, the FCA is planning to ask the English court to make declarations about the scope of various business interruption (BI) clauses.…

Continue Reading FCA’s Statements about Insurance and the Coronavirus: Competition Considerations

In these extraordinary times, economies around the World including Member States are pumping money into their economies.  Businesses and whole sectors are crying out for special support.  State support in the EEA above a low de minimis threshold is subject to strict state aid rules which requires pre-clearance by the European Commission under strict conditions. …

Brexit may well be around the corner, but antitrust enforcement is still alive and well on the other side of the Channel. On November 2, 2018, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK national competition authority, announced that it had provisionally found that ComparetheMarket, a home insurance price comparison site, may have infringed both…