Authors: Steven Cernak and Jarod Bona In big antitrust news, the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division released a draft of an update to the 1984 Vertical Merger Guidelines (VMG) on January 10, 2020. Only three of the five FTC commissioners voted to release the draft with…
Author: Luis Blanquez We’ve discussed the state action doctrine many times in the past. The courts have interpreted the federal antitrust laws as providing a limited exemption from the antitrust laws for certain state and local government conduct. This is known as state-action immunity. In this article, we will discuss…
Author: Jarod Bona You might hear from an antitrust attorney that it is important to have a strong antitrust compliance policy. And you may think to yourself, yes, I suppose it is. Then you go about your over-packed day, periodically seeing from other professionals that whatever their specialty is, you…
Author: Jarod Bona If, like me, you have ever spoken to someone that faces criminal indictment by a federal grand jury following a Justice Department antitrust investigation, you know why antitrust compliance counseling and training is a big deal—you don’t need reasons; hearing the crackle of the voice is enough…
Author: Luis Blanquez Luis Blanquez is a European Competition Attorney that works with Bona Law. WHAT IS AN ANTITRUST COMPLIANCE PROGRAM? An antitrust compliance program is an internal business policy designed by a company to educate directors and employees to avoid risks of anticompetitive conduct. Companies that conspire with their…
Author: Luis Blanquez The U.S. Department of Justice recently published that the International Competition Network (“ICN”) has approved the Framework on Competition Agency Procedures (“CAP”), for antitrust enforcement agencies around the world to promote fundamental due process principles in competition law investigations and enforcement. This is an opt-in framework, based…
Author: Aaron Gott My morning routine usually begins with reading the news to keep up on current events. As an antitrust lawyer, I often find myself thinking about how stories that were deemed newsworthy for other reasons fail to recognize their often most troubling aspects: the antitrust concerns. Last week,…
Author: Jarod Bona It is illegal under the antitrust laws for competitors to agree not to steal each others’ employees. For more about that, you can read our article about how the antitrust laws encourage stealing. Yes, you read that correctly. But this article isn’t about stealing or even agreeing…
Author: Luis Blanquez Makan Delrahim, Antitrust Chief for the United States Department of Justice, made news on June 1, 2018, when he announced that the United States will finalize and join the Multilateral Framework on Procedures in Competition Law Investigation and Enforcement. Delrahim explained why due process is a priority…
If you have sold or purchased a home recently, you might be under the impression that real estate commissions—the price to engage a real estate broker—are fixed or otherwise set by law in different geographic markets. They aren’t—to do so amounts to price-fixing, which is a per se violation of…