EU/UK Competition Law Newsletter - April 2012

UK Lowers the Bar for Personal Criminal Convictions

On 15 March 2012 the UK Government finally published its plans to amend the UK competition law regime. The most significant substantive change is the removal of the requirement to show "dishonesty" when the government brings a prosecution against an individual for the "cartel offence". This offence covers involvement by an individual acting for a business in certain types of cartel-type agreements such as price fixing. The change is expressly intended to make it easier to convict individuals for this offence. There will be a new defence; the offence will not be made out if the "parties" have agreed to publish details of the arrangements before they are implemented. However, the government itself admits that in practice this defence is likely to be used very rarely (if at all). It makes the unsurprising point that only a very small number of cartel agreements may be defensible (for their overall public benefits) and therefore suitable for publication in this way. Regardless, the changes...