OREANDA-NEWS. September 30, 2013. Participants of a regional workshop of the Unilateral Conduct Working Group (UCWG) of the International Competition Network (ICN) in Stockholm (Sweden) analyzed a hypothetical case on violating the antimonopoly law against a provider of services for selling tickets to museums, tours, sport events, etc.

Representatives of competition authorities from over 30 countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America took part in the business game. For two days, all participants, including a representative of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), were divided into four groups, each of which had to go through the stages from defining market boundaries to outlining possible decisions of an antimonopoly body on the case. The theoretical foundations for analyzing the hypothetical case were given in expert presentations.

Having “investigated” the case, all four groups arrived to different decisions. Some imposed a turnover fine and issued prohibitions; others only put forward prohibitions with regard to the periods and content of exclusive dealership agreements, which demonstrated broad approaches and complexity of analyzing abuses of dominance when there are exclusive arrangements, the impact of which upon the market is not always adverse.

Summing up the workshop results, Philipp Collins, the Head of the UK Office of Fair Trade, emphasized the importance of a detailed economic and financial analysis in investigating cases on abusing market dominance when there are exclusive arrangements due to their complexity and multifacetedness.

FAS may turn to a similar format of a business game for events organized, in particular, on the basis of its Resource-and-Training centre in Kazan.

Reference:

1. The Unilateral Conduct Working Group (UCWG) was formed at the V Annual ICN Conference in May 2006. The main objectives of the WG are to study problems associated with analysis of unilateral conduct of economic entities with dominant market position, assist better understanding of the issues related to analysis of unilateral conduct, and facilitate approximating and compliance with the laws on unilateral conduct.

In 2012-2013 C-Chairs of the WG are competition authorities of Sweden and Turkey and the UK Office of Fair Trade.

2. The concept of “exclusive dealership” in general applies to describing arrangements, under which a seller of goods or services sells to a distributor or a retail networks under a condition that the latter shall not sell similar goods or services. Exclusive dealership can also describe a reverse situation when a buyer agrees with a seller not to sell particular goods or services to competitors.