Conference programme

Heads of leading agencies will discuss recent developments, what they are prioritising today and where they expect competition law policy to focus going forward. They will also talk about how they coordinate their work and what international cooperation among the world’s antitrust agencies will look like in the coming years.

Merger control, which used to be a relatively predictable area of competition law, is now undergoing major developments all around the world including in Europe. The days of a ‘light touch’ approach are clearly over: competition authorities globally and in Europe are gaining increasingly stronger powers to review an ever wider range of transactions (including new approaches to jurisdiction and the reversal of the burden of proof). At the same time, for large global deals in a growing number of industry sectors, the number of foreign direct investment approvals required can now outnumber the necessary merger approvals. Add to this the new EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation mandatory notification system coming into effect on 12 October 2023 for deals involving firms benefitting from state aid. The result is the need for tripartite regulatory transaction planning. How can companies navigate these complex waters?

The law on unilateral conduct (abuse of dominance) has been generating headlines and is in a state of flux in the EU, US and other jurisdictions around the world. This panel will discuss recent cases, important court judgments and developments in enforcement trends. We will discuss the European Commission's amendments to its enforcement guidance paper and call for evidence on exclusionary abuses. Is the ‘effects-based’ approach being abandoned in favour of a more formalistic or ex ante regulatory approach? The panel will also discuss the relevant legal tests coming out of the case law, how economics plays a role in the analysis and practical tips for how companies can assess their conduct to ensure compliance.

Cost of living concerns have helped fuel populist demand for dramatic reform of competition law. A focus on inequality has stirred a debate in the competition community on anticompetitive concerns in labour markets. This session will consider the proposition that competition authorities should use their enforcement powers to prevent the creation of employer monopsony power, for example, through mergers or no-poaching agreements, and the abuse of that power.