competitionlaw

By a decision made on 11 November 2015 the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has closed a II-phase investigation into the proposed acquisition of Seat Pagine Gialle (Seat) by Libero Acquisition (Libero) in the Case C12001, LiberoAcquisition/Seat Pagine Gialle . The ICA took the view that the merger may have a negative impact on the competition in the market for directory assistance services. In this market the merging parties were the two major operators and collectively very high market shares, close a monopoly, as it was reflected by the relatively high result of the HHI test. Therefore, the ICA feared that the with the implementation of the merger the parties would have less incentives to compete on prices and quality. To resolve the competition concerns voiced by the ICA, the parties proposed to sell to an independent operator an undisclosed class of numbers used by them. The ICA approved this proposal as it believed that the divestiture was a remedy suitable to remove the c

By a decision made on 18 November 2015 in the Case I793 the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has opened an Article 101 TFEU investigation against four firms active in the market for the production and sale of concrete. The ICA started the proceedings following the recepit of a complaint. The complainant, a firm that produces and sells reinforced concrete in the region of Piedmont, reported to have received in the space of 5 days letters from three producers of concrete, Buzzi Unicem, Cementir and Cementirossi, by which they announced their intention to rise the price of concrete by the same amount. A similar communication was made by a fourth producer, Holcim, orally. Considering the above reported conducts, the ICA feared that the four concrete manufacturers may have entered into an anticompetitive horizontal agreement to fix the prices of concrete in a substantial part of the national market. This part was identified in the North-western regions of Italy where the plants of