The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.

EU antitrust chief considers lower fines for cooperating companies.  European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager  is suggesting that companies that admit to breaking the law should be rewarded with lower fines to help speed up antitrust investigations.  The European Commission typically takes several years to wrap up cases, which critics say is not helpful for consumers or competitors.  According to the EU’s top antitrust regulator, the EU “should reward companies that admit to having broken the law, especially when they come up with remedies to make the markets more competitive, or companies that provide evidence voluntarily.”

Citigroup reaches $23 mln ‘ice breaker’ yen Libor settlement.  Citigroup will pay $23 million to end private U.S. antitrust litigation claiming that it conspired to manipulate the yen Libor and Euroyen Tibor benchmark interest rates.  Lawyers for the plaintiff investors are calling the agreement an “ice breaker” that could spur some of the roughly 20 other bank defendants to settle.  Court approval of the settlement agreement is required.  RP Martin, a brokerage whose main assets are now part of BGC Partners Inc, also settled, without making a payment.

Judge Deals Blow to New Rodeo Circuit, but Lets Antitrust Suit Continue.  Judge Barbara Lynn of U.S. District Court in Dallas has ruled that new bylaws meant to protect the long-established Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association from competing rodeo circuits are enforceable, a blow to a group of top rodeo athletes planning a satellite circuit this year.  But the court also denied the association’s motion to dismiss a broader antitrust lawsuit filed by Elite Rodeo Athletes, whose nine-city tour is scheduled to stretch from March to November.  The suit came after the P.R.C.A. rewrote bylaws, including one that said that anyone with a financial interest in a competing circuit would not be eligible to compete in any of the hundreds of P.R.C.A.-sanctioned rodeos held each year.

German competition watchdog wants ‘big data’ hoards considered in merger probes: paper.  The vast troves of consumer data held by big Internet companies should be scrutinized in merger probes because they have a big impact on competition, according to the president of the German antitrust watchdog.  “Until now, markets in which no money flows and in which no revenues are posted do not count as markets from a competition point of view. But that obviously goes against the logic of many Internet markets,” Andreas Mundt told the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.