On 22 March 2011 the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) reached its Judgment on a dispute between BT and Ofcom regarding the prices charged by BT for partial private circuits to alternative network providers. The CAT dismissed BT’s appeal in its entirety – see here . RBB was instructed by Olswang, counsel to a group of alternative network providers who acted in support of Ofcom’s position on this case, and the expert evidence from RBB is cited in the Judgment. As a result of the Judgment, BT is obliged to pay back to the alternative network providers the full overcharge identified by Ofcom.

Simon Bishop spoke at the ICF 18th St. Gallen International Competition Law Forum which took place on 7-8th April 2011, in Switzerland.  See here for further details.

Adrian Majumdar spoke at the BIICL 9th Annual Merger Conference which took place on Thursday 17th March 2011, at The Law Society, 113 Chancery Lane, London.  Adrian chaired a panel on recent developments in the analysis of unilateral effects.  See here for further details.

Simon Bishop took part in a one-day workshop on “The role of expert economic evidence in antitrust proceedings” that was organised at the Institut d’Economie Industrielle, Toulouse and took place on the 16th March 2011.

Andrea Lofaro spoke at the Horizontal Co-operation Agreements conference organised by GCR which took place on the 1st March 2011 (The Stanhope Hotel, Brussels). Andrea provided an economic perspective on the potential pro-competitive effects of horizontal agreements and on the analytical framework to identify anti-competitive effects. See here for further details.

RBB Economics has won two awards at the GCR Awards 2011 ceremony that took place in Miami on Friday 4th February.  The first was the “Matter of the Year Award” for the work RBB conducted on Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems.  RBB was also involved in the other two matters that were shortlisted for this award, namely American Airlines, British Airways and Iberia’s Oneworld alliance and Ticketmaster/Live Nation.  The second was the “M&A Transaction of the Year Award, Europe” for our work on the Sanofi-Aventis joint venture with Merck.