Following a first phase investigation, the European Commission has cleared the combination of T-Mobile’s and Orange’s mobile telephony business in the United Kingdom subject to conditions. Whilst the Commission concluded that the merger would not result in an impediment to effective competition in the retail and wholesale mobile markets in the UK, it required first phase remedies in relation to an existing network sharing agreement between T-Mobile and 3 as well as a divestment of part of the combined spectrum holdings of the parties to facilitate future mobile broadband competition. RBB advised both parties to the transaction alongside lawyers Clifford Chance and Gide Loyrette Nouel

Recently, the Dutch health care authority (NZa) published a joint report by RBB and Freshfields on economic and legal aspects of buyer power and collective bargaining in the Dutch health care sector. The Dutch health care sector is being liberalized, resulting in an increased importance of negotiations between private health insurers and suppliers of health care services such as hospitals.The report is published on the website of the NZa and can be downloaded at: http://www.nza.nl/binaries/7113/10118/133880/BB_Freshfields
_Inkoopmacht_en_collectief_onderhandelen_in_de_zorgsector.pdf

Derek Ridyard is participating in the conference organised by GCR in London on 23 March on Competition Law, Consumer Goods and Retail. The conference draws together a wide range of live competition issues affected branded goods suppliers and retailers in light of the increased enforcement emphasis that has affected this sector in recent times.

For more information see: http://www.globalcompetitionreview.com/events/800/gcrs-competition-law-consumer-goods-retail/

Derek Ridyard is one of the speakers at the 14th annual conference organised by IBC on Dominance and Pricing in Europe, to be held in Brussels on 25 February 2010. The conference will feature talks on rebates, standard-setting and refusal to supply under Article 102 and feature talks from representatives of the Commission, industry and leading practitioners.

For more details on the conference see:

http://www.iir-events.com/IIR-conf/LawCompliance/EventView.aspx?EventID=2548

An updated and enlarged third edition of The Economics of EC Competition Law has been published by Sweet & Maxwell. This leading guide to the principles and practice of competition economics is co-authored by RBB partner Simon Bishop.

Following a second phase investigation, the European Commission has unconditionally cleared Oracle’s proposed acquisition of US hardware and software vendor Sun Microsystems. The Commission’s investigation focused on the nature and extent of the competitive constraint exerted by the open source database MySQL on Oracle, the leading proprietary database vendor, and whether this would be affected by the proposed transaction. The Commission eventually concluded that the transaction would be unlikely to impede effective competition significantly. RBB advised Oracle throughout the second phase investigation alongside lawyers Clifford Chance.