The Italian Competition Authority targets an alleged bid-rigging practice in the waste management sector


Upon the receipt of a complaint filed by Ama Spa (Ama), the in-house provider of waste management services for the municipality of Rome, the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has opened an antitrust investigation against several operators (decision of 12 December 2018, case I831, Gare Ama Servizio smaltimento rifiuti). The ICA feared that these firms had coordinated their behaviours in connection to two tender competitive procedures organized by Ama for procuring waste management services it required.
Those tender procedures were launched in February and July 2018 and were aimed at awarding the public contracts for the provision of services for transport and disposal of waste and other materials produced by the plants run by Ama for the treatment of urban waste. The minimum prices quoted in the tender notices issued in February and July 2018 were higher than those applied by Ama in its previous procedures. These prices were also in line with the winning bids for the contracts for the provision of similar services recently awarded. Notwithstanding that, none of the operators that were potentially capable of providing the services tendered out by Ama made a bid in the above two procedures. Instead, Ama individually negotiated with those operators contracts for the provision of the waste management services in question for which it had to offer much higher prices.
Looking at those facts, the ICA took the view that the decision to refrain from bidding in the two tender procedures called for by Ama might be explained with a coordination among the waste management operators to provide their services to Ama at inflated prices. The ICA also believed that for this coordination to be successfully implemented, the role of two main multiutility firms, A2A and Hera, was relevant. Not only could A2A and Hera have made a bid for the waste management services required by Ama but they were also the parent companies that historically provided these services to Ama.
In conclusion what the ICA feared is that the firms under investigation might have agreed to not bidding for the contracts for the award of which Ama launched the under investigation tender procedures of February and July 2018. As a result, Ama was forced to purchase the waste management services it was in need through the more expensive negotiated procedure.
  

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