Pets In The Antitrust Arms (Overview Of Competition Events From June To August 2023)

• Published date: 13 November 2023
• Subject Matter: orporate/Commercial Law, Antitrust/Competition Law, M&A/Private Equity, Compliance, Antitrust, EU Competition
• Law Firm: Havel & Partners s.r.o.
• Author: Mr Robert Neruda and Petra Joanna Pipkov'

We present you with the fortieth anniversary edition of our newsletter. It focuses on events that took place in the world of competition law in the summer of 2023. Our regular readers know that this is a purely subjective selection of events that we found significant or noteworthy for some reason.

We are back with our never-ending series after the summer break, during which hopefully you did not miss us as we kept filling the pages of our blog with a number of articles on various topics, mainly regarding the amendment to the Czech Competition Act. Even during the summer months, the competition authorities did not take a break, and so we can offer you the premium treats from the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition (the Office) and the European Commission (EC). This time we focused on distribution agreements and mergers.

Office's pricing evergreen

As you will have already noticed, from the point of view of the practice, the Office sees its priority in combatting resale price fixing. This is the most frequently sanctioned practice, for which the highest fines are imposed in relative (not nominal) terms - sometimes as high as 10% of the undertaking's total annual turnover. For the Office, this summer was no exception in this regard. We can thus present you with further cases of resale price maintenance (RPM).

During the summer months, the Office imposed fines for RPM on two undertakings in the pet food distribution sector. A penalty of CZK 307,000 was imposed on TENESCO for fixing the minimum retail price of the supplied dog and cat food and treats. The company checked the sellers' compliance with these prices and told them to increase their prices to the level set by the company, which the sellers allegedly did. The fine is unusually low at first sight.

The reason is not only the low annual turnover of TENESCO, but also the reduction of the fine by 65%. The first reason for the reduction was the voluntary cessation of the anti-competitive conduct immediately after the dawn raid performed by the Office. Furthermore, the above-standard cooperation during the administrative proceedings (similar to leniency, which at that time - before the amendment to the Competition Act became effective - was not yet applicable to this type of agreements) was taken into account. Last but not least, the Office also took into account the introduction of a new competition compliance programme. Finally, the Office reduced the fine by a further 20% as part of the...