The Italian Competition Authority closes by a commitment decision an Article 102 TFEU into the market for cholic acide

In the Case A473 FornituraAcido Colico (Cholic Acid Supplies) the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has closed by a commitment decision an Article 102 TFEU investigation it had opened against ICE, the world' leading producer of cholic acid. ICE is a vertically integrated firm that buys and sells beef bile to be used for the preparation of cholic acide; produces and sells the cholic acide, which is used to make the ursodeoxycholic acid, an active ingredient employed for the preparation of many drugs. The ICA believed that ICE abused its market position in the cholic acide market by foreclosing competitors in many ways: margin squeezing; refusing to supply its clients with the bile required to make the cholic acid; aggressive pricing policies in the downstream market for the ursodeoxycholic acid targeted at competitors' clients; discontinues supplying bile to firms that sold cholid acid to its clients.
To deal with the competition problems stemming from the above exclusionary conducts ICE submitted a set of behavioural commitments by which, in essence, it committed to sell certain quantities of beef bile at a price corresponding to the average purchase price it paid for the bile plus a fair margin. ICE gave this selling undertaking for a period of time up to 3 years. The ICA accepted and made binding these commitments, though they concerned the market for the input product and not the market for the cholid acid, which was the market affected by the contested conducts. Notwithstanding that, the ICA believed that the proposed commitments should ensure competitors access to the beef bile at the same conditions as ICE and also give the former an incentive to adopt a more efficient vertically integrated structure as ICE already did.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Aspen: The Italian Competition Authority fines a generic manufacturer of drugs for excessive pricing

By the decision made on 29 September 2016 in Aspen [i] , the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has imposed a fine of more than EUR 5 million on the Aspen group (Aspen), a South African manufacturer of generic drugs. Aspen violated Article 102 TFEU by imposing excessive prices for the supply of the so-called ‘Cosmos drugs’. These drugs included Leukeran, Alkeran, Purinethol and Tioguanine, which included the active principles of chlorambucil, melphalan, mercaptopurine and tioguanine, respectively. All these drugs were used to treat cancer pathologies and included in a wider package of pharmaceutical products, whose marketing rights had been purchased by Aspen from the originator GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in 2009. Aspen had a dominant position in the relevant product markets for the commercialization of anti-cancer drugs manufactured using the active principles of alkeran, leukeran, purinethol and tioguanine. It had the only one market authorization for the sale of drugs and potential ...
Read more

Geographical allocation of turnover in aviation mergers: What the European Commission recently hold

The European Merger Control Regulation (ECMR) stipulates that only concentrations with a European dimension fall within the regulatory jurisdiction of the European Commission to review. A concentration is presumed to have such a dimension when it meets the financial threshold in Article 1 of the ECMR. To this end, it is necessary to calculate the turnover generated by the merging parties within the Community or in one or more member states. However, the geographical allocation of the turnover required by Article 1 for the purpose to establish the Commission’s jurisdiction can be a tricky issue in case of mergers between undertakings with a cross-border activity such airliners. In fact, the activities of airlines span several countries as they typically operate flights and sell tickets in many national markets. Recently, the Commission has dealt with the issue at length in the Ryanair/Aer Lingus case. It identified three possible methodologies for geographical allocation of turnover: -...
Read more

The European Commission unconditionally clears the Facebook/WhatsApp merger

By a Phase I decision the Commission unconditionally approved the Facebook $ 19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp ( Case No COMP/M.7217,Facebook/WhatsApp) . The Commission was required by the parties to review the transaction by means of a reasoned submission filed on the basis of Article 4(5) of the EU Merger Regulation. Indeed, the merger was not a concentration with EU dimension within the meaning of Article 1 EUMR falling within the Commission jurisdiction, since the EU turnover of WhatsApp in 2013 failed to met the financial thresholds in that provision. The Commission identified three relevant product markets affected by the concentration. It restrained the first relevant market, the market for consumer communication services, to the communication apps for smartphones, because WhatsApp was available only for this device. Following its approach in Microsoft/Skype (Case M.6281), upheld by the General Court in the case T-79/12, Cisco Systems and Messagenet v Commission, the Com...
Read more