Global Legal Insights - Cartels

We are delighted to present the 11th edition of Global Legal Insights – Cartels. This edition covers the most significant developments in 21 jurisdictions around the world.

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We are delighted to present the 11th edition of Global Legal Insights – Cartels. This edition covers the most significant developments in 21 jurisdictions around the world and, as before, is designed to provide in-house counsel, government agencies and private practice lawyers with a practical insight into cartel enforcement policy and procedure, including leniency/amnesty regimes, administrative settlement, sanctions and appeals.
The aim of this edition, as with other volumes in the Global Legal Insights series, is to collect the views and opinions of a group of leading competition law practitioners from around the world in a single volume. Authors continue to be encouraged to focus their chapter on what they consider to be the most important practice points and recent developments in their jurisdictions, with a free rein to determine the content of their chapter. By giving the authors the opportunity both to select the legal and policy issues that they wish to discuss, and to offer insights into the practical operation of their national regimes, this book aims to look beyond the anti-cartel provisions and enforcement procedures that apply in the various jurisdictions. It also facilitates an up-to-date comparative analysis of the approaches currently being taken by competition agencies around the world to some of the difficult issues that can arise in practice.
This year has seen a trend towards renewed enforcement activities by regulators in several jurisdictions, with the number of dawn raids rising sharply. At the time of writing, regulators in the EU, UK, USA and Switzerland have just announced coordinated actions in the fragrance sector. Much of the activity seems sector agnostic but there are common underlying issues: for example, alleged agreements by smaller companies in response to the perceived unfair practices of digital platforms; and agreements to limit the allegedly excessive costs of complying with regulatory obligations, including those imposed by environmental laws. Despite this increase in enforcement activity, the total level of fines imposed globally has been significantly lower than previous years, possibly reflecting the lower level of enforcement activity in recent years during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
We thank the many authors for their considerable efforts in providing what we hope is a more in-depth look at the global cartels landscape, which we hope will prove to be helpful when considering enforcement initiatives and developments in your own jurisdiction.