Antitrust Matters – April 2022

Editorial

We are living in turbulent times, and, while many forces contribute to the turbulence, the main long-term trend continues to be climate change. Consequently, the focus on competition and sustainability, which we discussed in the previous issue of Antitrust Matters, will not fade away, but continue to grow. Whether the European Commission will generously accommodate European businesses in their desire to join forces in defeating this danger remains to be seen. The recently published draft guidelines on horizontal cooperation seem to offer an opening, but only a small one. Parental liability has been a steady concern in European competition law for decades. It has become one of the central tenets in public and private enforcement of European competition law. The recent decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Sumal case, is not the last word, but one more step in the same direction. In this new issue of Antitrust Matters, you will find a brief overview of the state of affairs, with a reminder that the importance of compliance for groups of companies and joint ventures can hardly be underestimated.

Unlike in the US, enforcement focused on “no poach” agreements – promises between or amongst employers not to hire or recruit each other’s employees – is fairly new to Europe and Asia. In their contribution in this issue, Nathan Bush, Yong Min Oh, David Smail and Léon Korsten discuss this developing trend and cover employment law trends relating to the Gig Economy, Employee Misclassification and Industrial relations.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) screening, while anything but new, has the wind at its back. Whereas a few years ago only a handful of countries had mature FDI screening, it is increasingly the norm for a country to have rules in place to protect essential infrastructure and industries from hostile foreign takeovers. The United Kingdom is – after Brexit not entirely surprisingly – the pre-eminent example of a country that has recently implemented a very comprehensive, very strict regime for FDI screening retroactively. You can read more about this in Alistair White’s contribution on the UK National Security and Investment Regime.

Léon Korsten, on behalf of DLA Piper’s Antitrust community.