The Italian Competition Authority conditionally clears an Article 102 TFEU investigation in the market for the supply of financial information

By a commitment decision made on the basis of the Article 14-ter of the Italian Competition Law no. 247/1990 in E-Class/Borsa Italiana, the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has closed an investigation against Borsa Italiana (BIt)[1]. BIt was alleged to have abused its dominant position by negatively affecting the market for the services for the provision of financial information by making its competitors’ access to such essential inputs more difficulty.

The decision of the ICA
The ICA started the Article 102 TFEU investigation against BIt following the receipt of a complaint filed by e-Class. e-Class was an electronic publisher that also provided financial information services. BIt was a vertically integrated group that enjoyed a dominant position, or more precisely a monopoly position, in the market for the organization and management of the platforms for trading financial instruments and equities. Its subsidiary, Borsa Italiana Market Services (BIMS) operated in the downstream market for the provision of financial information services in competition with other vendors, among which e-Class. The vendors use the financial information created and made available by the managers of the trading platforms as inputs to supply their financial information services. In practice, these are essential inputs for the vendors to carry out their activities in the downstream market. The ICA objected to the terms BIt included in the agreements concluded with the vendors for the supply of financial information that were alleged to foreclose the vendors from the market for the supply of financial information services. The contractual terms imposed restrictive conditions as for the access of vendors to the financial information.  BIt also imposed on vendors fees different from those applied on BIMS, as a result of which vendors could not match the offers made by BIMS to its customers. The ICA, however, did not say whether this pricing policy amounted to a margin squeeze practice. That said, the ICA believed that the contested conducts were part of a foreclosing strategy pursued by BIt and BIMS against the rivals of BIMS in the downstream market for the financial information supply services. For the BIMS competitors access to the necessary financial information could be more difficult and costly with the result that the services of the latter might be less competitive than those of the former.
To deal with the competition concerns voiced by the ICA, BIt and BIMS submitted a set of behavioural and structural commitments which were then approved and made binding by the ICA that the closed the proceedings with a commitment decision procedure on the basis of Article 14-ter of the Italian Competition Law no. 247/1990. First, BIt and BIMS committed to sell to an independent third party the Market Connect business branch of BIMS that supply financial information services. The parties also offered a number of temporary commitments until the execution of the divestiture. BIt and BIMS also offered a number of behavioural commitments for the functional separation between the Market Connect business and the branch of BIt that deals with the management of financial data.
The ICA took the view that the divestiture and the functional separation commitments are suitable measures to resolve the above competition problems. Severing the links connecting BIt with the Market Connect business branch will end the vertical integration between the owner of the financial data in the upstream market and the supplier of such data that competes with other operators in the downstream market. Indeed, whether BIt could have allegedly abused its dominant position was because of the vertical integration between the BIt and BIMS businesses. The ICA objected to the parties’ commitment that they would require the vendors to sign the ‘Real Time Data Agreement’ standard. Following to the market test to which the commitments were subjected, the parties amended the commitment at hand. Therefore, they reframed the commitment as a best effort commitment and in case of failure of signing of the ‘Real Time Data Agreement’ standard agreement, the previous agreements concluded with the vendors would apply.    






[1] Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (Italian Competition Authority),  decision of 3 February  2016, Case n. A482, E-Class/Borsa Italiana, Bulltettin n. 4 of 22 February 2016, http://www.agcm.it/component/joomdoc/bollettini/4-16.pdf/download.html

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