On September 26, 2022, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action published a draft of the Competition Enforcement Act which will amend the German Act Against Restraints of Competition (“ARC”) for the 11th time (“Draft 11th Amendment”).[1] The aim of the Draft 11th Amendment is to strengthen the Federal Cartel Office’s (“FCO”) enforcement powers beyond the existing enforcement of antitrust and abuse of dominance violations.
In a landmark decision announced on September 6, 2022 (“Decision”), the European Commission (“EC”) prohibited the acquisition by Illumina, a U.S. company specialising in genomic sequencing, of GRAIL, a U.S.-based start-up developing early cancer-detection tests (“Transaction”).[1]
In the second episode of Cleary Gottlieb’s Antitrust Review podcast, a panel of Cleary Gottlieb partners discuss the achievements to
On August 5, 2022, the Italian Parliament adopted Law No. 118, the “2021 Annual Competition Law” (the “ACL”). The ACL, which will enter into force on August 27, 2022, amends the Italian Competition Law (Law No. 287/90) in various respects.
Cleary Gottlieb partners Nicholas Levy, Paul Gilbert, and Jackie Holland and associate Courtney Olden co-authored the “UK” chapter of the
The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) last week fined pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Flynn £63 million and £6.7 million for engaging in excessive pricing. In the CMA’s view, the companies charged unfairly high prices for Phenytoin capsules, a genericised anti-epilepsy drug, in violation of competition law.
In a significant judgment rendered on July 13, 2022 (“Judgment”), the EU’s General Court validated the position taken by the European Commission (“EC”) in a March 2021 Guidance Paper encouraging national competition authorities (“NCAs”) to use Article 22 of the EU Merger Regulation (“EUMR”) to refer transactions to the EC that do not meet national merger control thresholds, but which they believe may threaten to significantly affect competition within the EU.
On 30 June 2022, the EU institutions reached political agreement on a new regulation which will allow the European Commission to control non-EU government subsidies given to businesses active in the EU (the “Regulation”).
On July 6, the French Competition Authority (“FCA”) published its annual report for the year 2021.[1] In particular, the report highlights (i) the key figures of the FCA activity in 2021, (ii) the reinforced investigative powers of the FCA and (iii) the roadmap for 2022-2023.