The Italian Competition Authority targets a margin squeeze practice in the financial sector
The Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has opened an Article 102 TFEU investigation against Monte Titoli Spa (MT) in the case A506 Monte Titoli-Servizio di post-trading (Monte Titoli) . The ICA feared that MT breached competition by carrying out anti-competitive foreclosing and discriminatory pricing policies. The parties and the relevant regulatory framework MT was a vertically integrated financial service provider wholly owned by the Italian Stock Exchange (Borsa Italiana). The antitrust investigation, the ICA started following the receipt of complaint filed by MT’s competitors, targets the pricing policies put in place by MT since 2016. MT is the only entity licensed by the Italian financial regulators to provide the services of settlement and centralized administration of securities as Central Security Depositary (CSD). Moreover, MT joined the Target 2 Securities (T2S) platform developed under the auspices of the European Central Bank. As a result, MT is the only nation...