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E.CA Competition Law & Economics Expert Forum – keynotes by Valletti and Mundt

1 October 2018, Berlin

This year, the E.CA Expert Forum, organised jointly with ESMT Berlin, focussed on two themes, Digital Markets and Merger Control.

Tommaso Valletti, chief economist at DG Competition, and Andreas Mundt, president of the Bundeskartellamt, were holding the keynote speeches, providing an insight on their views on competition enforcement in digital markets and current and future merger control.

Mike Walker, chief economist of the UK Competition and Markets Authority, presented on Digital Pricing and Algorithms and contributed to the Digital Markets panel. Arno Rasek, chief economist of the Bundeskartellamt, presented a new method for regional market definition and contributed to the merger panel, alongside with Giulio Federico from the Chief Economist Team of the European Commission.

In total, Chief Economists from five competition authorities were part of the panel or in the audience. Authority representatives from 13 different countries had registered for the Expert Forum, contributing to valuable discussions during the various sessions and panels.

We would like to thank all speakers and participants for having contributed to this event!

Programme

View the programme of the Expert Forum here.

Presentations

Digital Markets – Key Issues

 

Brand Reputation, Cooperation and Intra-Platform Competition

 

Digital Pricing and Algorithms

 

Data-Driven Services, Online Advertisement and Privacy

 

Mergers – Are Markets too Concentrated?

  • Are Markets too Concentrated? Achim WAMBACH, Head of the German Monopolies Commission and President of the Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW)

 

Mergers in Geographically Differentiated Markets

Press coverage

Press coverage by PaRR:

DG Comp chief economist says merging firms could advise on common shareholdings – Berlin E.CA Expert Forum

Filing parties could play a role in helping the European Commission (EC) to assess common shareholdings in merger review, DG Comp’s chief economist told a conference in Berlin today (1 October).

A pragmatic solution could be to request merging firms to tell authorities who their top 10 investors are, Tommaso Valletti said during the E.CA Competition Law & Economics Expert Forum. This would prevent the EC shouldering an additional burden and at the same time would allow common ownership links to be identified, he added.

For more information or to read the whole story, please use the following links (accessible for subscribers of PaRR only):

Press coverage by MLex:

Press coverage by GCR:

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