Business cartels between competing market participants are designed to limit or eliminate competition between them, with the objective of increasing prices and profit of the cartel members. In practice, this is generally achieved by fixing prices, market sharing, limiting output, allocating customers or territories, bid-rigging, or a combination of the above. Cartels are harmful to consumers and society as a whole since the participating businesses charge higher prices (and earn higher profits) than would be the case in a competitive market. Because of their negative impact on the market, competition legislation fights against cartels, imposing substantial fines on participants, which […]
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The Serbian Competition Authority (“SCA”) recently focused on unapproved mergers i.e. gun-jumping. The most recent “victim” of the SCA’s investigations into gun-jumping was Fortenova Grupa d.d. (“Fortenova”), with the only previous undertaking fined for gun-jumping being Prointer IT Solutions. Meanwhile, Ernst & Young are also being investigated under the same allegations. Is this simply a witch hunt or is there something going on here? Gun-jumping (not only during the Olympics) Before we get into the heart of the matter let`s define what gun-jumping is. In competition law, gun-jumping is a concept pertaining to an unlawful pre-merger and pre-clearance coordination of […]
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On 6 October 2017, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia ( hereinafter: the Chamber of Commerce) published a document entitled, “Comments of the Members of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce: Protection of Competition Act” (Comments) resulting from consultations with the representatives of the Serbian business sector on the implementation of the Act on Protection Competition (Competition Act). As expected, in the document, members of the Chamber of Commerce emphasized the need for normative improvements and proposed amendments to the Act, all with the aim of fostering a more competitive business environment. Members of the Chamber of Commerce specifically […]
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