competitionlaw

By the decision of 7 May 2014 in the case I780 Mercato del Calcestruzzo in Veneto the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has opened an cartel investigation against seven producers and a consultancy firm. These firms were alleged to have entered into two anticompetitive agreements in the market for the production and sale of cement in the Region of Veneto, one in the coastal area of the province of Venice and the other in the alpine province of Belluno. Apparently, they parties agreed to coordinate their pricing policies and apportion market shares; they also put in practice mechanisms for the exchange of sensitive data and for monitoring the conducts of cartelists and punishing those who deviated from collusion. The role of the consultancy firms was to organize the information exchange.

By the decision made on 22 October 2014 the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has opened a Phase II merger control investigation into a joint venture agreement concluded by two major Italian publishers, Messaggerie and Feltrinelli ( Case C-7222, Emmelibri/Effe 2005 ) . By the planned joint venture Messaggerie and Feltrinelli intended to put in common their book distribution businesses. Pursuant to Article 5 of the Italian Competition Act, the ICA qualified the notified transaction as a full function joint venture and, accordingly, its competition impact had to assessed under the merger control regime. Messaggerie and Feltrinelli were vertically integrated firms that traded in the downstream book publishing market and in the upstream book retailing markets. For this reason the ICA found that the relevant markets affected by the proposed concentration were not only the joint venture market for books distribution but also the above referred downstream and upstream markets. The I...

By a decision made on 8 October 2014 in the case I785 the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has opened an Article 101 TFEU investigation against CNS, MFN, EXITone and Kuadra. These firms are alleged to have coordinated their conducts in the market for school cleaning services with regard to the tender competition procedure organized by Consip in September 2013. By the tender procedure Consip intended to award 13 contracts for the provision of school cleaning services. CNS, EXITone and Kuadra bid for some of the above contracts through the AT1 consortium, of which they were members, and also MFM submitted a bid. The ICA believed that the parties agreed to allocate eight of the ten tendered out contracts, with three contracts being awarded to AT1 and three to MFM. The ICA concerns about the above bid rigging practices were based on the fact that MFM did not bid for the contracts awarded to AT1; whereas AT1 did not bid for the two contracts then awarded to MFM and it submitted a wea...