competitionlaw

The Italian Competition Authority (ICA) is still really active in enforcing the competition provision to suppliers of health services. Indeed, by a decision made on 7 October 2015 in the Case I792 the ICA has opened an investigation against two anti-competitive agreements affecting the market for the provision of health services on the basis of Article 101 TFEU and the corresponding Article 2 of the Competition Act n. 287/90. More specifically, the ICA targets two wide bid-rigging practices which, respectively, eight and nine market operators, were alleged to have carried out. The first contested agreement concerned the competitive tender procedures organized since 2012 by the Milan's health authority for the award of the provision of out-of-hospital ventilotherapy services. The ICA observed that none or only a few operators participated in the first procedures. Following the decision of the contracting authority to lower the requirements for the award of the contracts on th

The Swiss Competition Authority (Comco) has recently opened an antitrust investigation against several major Swiss- based and international financial houses, UBS, Julius B ä r, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Mitsui. The Comco believed that these institutions have entered into an agreement to coordinate the so-called 'bid-ask spread' prices for precious metals that include gold, silver, platinum and palladium. Apparently, the Comco decided to enquire into whether the prices for such metals was manipulated on the basis of the information which may have been supplied by UBS that, according to the media, was granted conditional fine immunity under the Swiss leniency guidelines ( Leprogramme de clémence en droit suisse de cartels ). The Comco then joined other competition authorities, namely the US Department of Justice and the European Commission, that had previously started an antitrust investigation against global financial institutions to establish whether