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.

In December 2009, the CC cleared the proposed merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation after an in-depth investigation. The clearance decision represented a turnaround from the CC’s earlier provisional findings in which it anticipated that the merger would result in an SLC. RBB advised Ticketmaster in relation to this investigation, working alongside lawyers from Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and SJ Berwin. Subsequently, third party CTS Eventim challenged the CC decision in the CAT and as a result the CC will now reconsider its decision and treat its clearance decision as provisional.

Derek Ridyard is one of the speakers at the conference organised by GCR on dominance and unilateral conduct, to be held in Brussels on 9 February 2010. Speakers at the conference include representatives of the competition authorities in Brussels, Washington, London, Paris and Bonn, as well as some leading practitioners in the field.

For more details on the conference see:
http://www.globalcompetitionreview.com/_lbr/_conferences/_files/789-GCR_Dominance.pdf

Benoit Durand is one of the speakers at the IBC conference on the European Commission’s proposed modifications of the Vertical Restraints regime. The conference will be held in Brussels on 24th November 2009. The speakers will discuss restrictions under the new regime, internet distribution, selective distribution, resale price maintenance and buyer power issues.

For more information and the list of speakers see:
http://www.iir-events.com/IIR-conf/LawCompliance/EventView.aspx?EventID=2478

Derek Ridyard is one of the speakers at a conference organised by IBC on reform of Regulation in the motor vehicle sector, to be held in Brussels on 25 November 2009. Other speakers include senior Commission officials with responsibility for the ongoing reforms, industry participants and some of the leading legal practitioners in the field.

For more information see:
http://www.iir-events.com/IIR-Conf/page.aspx?id=23116