Florence Thépot provides the first systematic account of the interaction between competition law and corporate governance. She challenges the 'black box' conception of the firm- or 'undertaking' - in competition law, as applied to increasingly complex corporate relations. The book opens the 'black box' of the firm to understand the internal drivers of collusive behaviour, and proposes a unified approach to cartel enforcement, based on the agency theory. It explores key issues including corporate compliance programmes, the attribution of liability in corporate groups, and structural links between competitors, and should be read by anyone interested in how the evolution of the corporate landscape impacts competition law.

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

Report for The Office of the Economic Prosecutor of the Republic of Chile, Fiscalia Nacional Economica.

This chapter discusses the significance of corporate compliance programmes as a competition enforcement tool. Current enforcement challenges in the fight against collusive practices that are, a low probability of detection and under-deterrence of corporate fines, raise the need to move away from a strictly sanction-based type of enforcement. It is argued that competition authorities should steer companies’ incentives towards implementing effective compliance programmes. Rewarding effective compliance programmes in the context of an investigation can improve the effectiveness of corporate sanctions in providing ex ante incentives to companies to deter and detect illegal behaviour internally. Outlining the key foundations of an effective compliance programme, this chapter also helps understanding how and when competition authorities should reward the compliance efforts of companies.

No abstract available.

Introduction to special issue

Souvent occultée par les situations de prises de participations minoritaires, la pratique des cumuls de mandats d’administrateur entre concurrents n’est pas sans susciter un risque d’effets anticoncurrentiels. Cette contribution s’attache, à partir d’une analyse systématique des instruments existants, à déterminer si le droit des sociétés et les principes de gouvernance d’entreprise peuvent efficacement suppléer le droit de la concurrence dans le traitement des effets négatifs induits par les cumuls, et à mettre ainsi en lumière l’existence d’un vide juridique en Europe. = Interlocking directorates between competitors may raise significant anti-competitive risks, which attract little attention in comparison to that posed by other structural links, such as minority shareholdings. This article provides a systematic analysis of the ability of current legal tools of competition law, as well as of company law and corporate governance to address those anti-competitive risks, and thereby, highlights the existence of an enforcement gap in Europe.

One of the striking differences between competition law and anti-corruption is the manner in which agencies take into account the compliance efforts of companies in the context of their investigations. The European Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division  refuse to consider compliance programs as mitigating factors in antitrust infringements. The French and U.K. competition authorities may grant a maximum of 10 percent reduction in fines for having effective compliance measures. In contrast, in the area of anti-corruption, companies in some of the same jurisdictions can escape liability completely for having implemented “adequate procedures.” This paper explores possible reasons for such a gap in policy approaches.

The online-search and social-networking industries are characterized by the concentration of large market shares among a very limited number of actors. Being advertisement-based media, search engines and social-networking websites fall within the category of special types of markets known as two-sided markets or platforms. Two-sided markets or platforms have two distinct user groups which produce network benefits for each other. The platforms enable the user groups to minimize the transaction costs they would otherwise incur, in interacting with or searching for each other. Competition authorities cannot ignore the economics of two-sided markets in assessing market power in the search and social networking industries. This paper provides a framework for defining the relevant market and for assessing market power in the industries of online search and social-networking websites, focusing on the current leaders Google and Facebook and argues that online-search and social-networking websites may exert competitive constraints on each other, as they both operate in the relevant market for ‘monetization of user’s information by online advertising’.

The purpose of this article is to examine the interplay between two competition policy enforcement instruments - leniency policy and individual liability, by opening the ‘black box’ of the cartel, with the analysis of interactions both among the cartel members and within each company. The interplay of these instruments translates into a two-dimensional system: the horizontal dimension is formed by the cartel members; the vertical one by the interactions within each cartel member. We base our analysis on the theory of the firm, advocating the separation of ownership and control, and on the theory of agency that states the principles of inherent moral hazard problems between the principal (owner) and the agent (manager). The reasoning is carried out along economic and legal literature on collusive agreements, leniency programmes and individual liability. The economic literature also gives key insights on corporate governance issues that are relevant in cartels, through game theoretical approaches. Theoretical insights will help us to understand why cartel activity is a matter of agency and governance issues. The subsequent section will be dedicated to the examination of individual liability and corporate leniency policy, in the light of agency issues. Individual leniency policy will be assessed in the last section. Individual leniency programmes are in practice never used by individuals of companies of a cartel. Nonetheless, such programmes are efficient in the way they undermine both the relations between cartel members and those inside the companies. We show how opening the ‘black box’ of the cartel is of primary importance when assessing the efficiency of leniency and individual liability. Agency issues shape the interactions between actors operating in both dimensions of the system under consideration, which are the principals and the agents of the firms of the cartel.

Colloque organisé par l'équipe droit des affaires de l'UMR DRES, Faculté de droit, UNISTRA sous la direction scientifique de Thibault de Ravel d'Esclapon

Colloque organisé sous la direction scientifique de Chantal Cutajar, Maître de conférences, HDR ; Caroline Peloso, Maître de conférences et Maxime Lassalle, Maître de conférences.

Colloque international de la FIDC organisé par le DRES, UNISTRA sous la direction scientifique de Juliette Lelieur, Professeure à l’Université de Strasbourg, Kansu Okyay et Silvain Vernaz, Maîtres de conférences contractuels à l’Université de Strasbourg

Organised with the DRES, Unistra by Florence Thépot - DRES, University of Strasbourg, Anna Tzanaki - University of Lund, and Jens-Uwe Franck - University of Mannheim and MaCCI

Le champ des professionnels assujettis au dispositif préventif de lutte contre le blanchiment d’argent et le financement du terrorisme (LCB/FT) n’a cessé de s’étendre depuis sa mise en place. Au-delà des professions financières il vise depuis la directive 2001/97/CE du 04 décembre 20201, les avocats, tenus désormais au respect d’obligations de vigilance et de déclaration.L’assujettissement des avocats aux obligations LCB/FT soulève des interrogations conceptuelles notamment au regard du secret professionnel et de l’autorégulation. Il pose également des difficultés de mise en oeuvre, ayant à l’origine été conçu pour les institutions financières, il est mal adapté à la profession d’avocat.Or, le contexte actuel va dans le sens d’un renforcement inédit du cadre règlementaire, à l’échelle internationale, européenne et, par voie de conséquence au niveau national. De plus, la dernière évaluation du GAFI réalisée en 2022 a mis en évidence des faiblesses dans le dispositif applicable aux avocats. Pour préserver les principes fondamentaux qui régissent la profession, cette dernière devrait être force de proposition pour réaliser des réformes adéquates.Il nous semble que les CARPA constituent un outil performant dont il conviendrait de renforcer le rôle en la matière. Une réforme du système d’autorégulation semble également devoir s’imposer non seulement pour préserver l’autorégulation mais également pour répondre aux critiques formulées par le GAFI.Enfin, il nous paraît indispensable de développer une culture des risques au sein de la profession, notamment en renforçant la formation, initiale et continue mais aussi en développant des partenariats privilégiés avec les acteurs du secteur, public et privé.