For a collective that has been around in some form or other for more than 60 years, it can be surprising how little harmonisation there is across the EU. Eurocrats have been wrestling for some time with the tangled web that is the application of damages for breaches of Europe’s competition law. Currently, infringements result […]
US firm Reed Smith has returned to Hogan Lovells for a senior partner hire in Paris, bringing in corporate partner Isabelle MacElhone and associate Bertrand Baheu-Derras. The move follows Reed Smith’s launch of a Paris competition practice last April, when it hired Hogan Lovells’ antitrust, competition and economic regulation co-head Michel Debroux (10 April 2013). MacElhone, […]
White & Case has been disqualified from acting on one of its flagship cases, the $2bn oligarch litigation between Ukranian industrialist Victor Pinchuk and his rivals Gennady Bogoliubov and Igor Kolomoisky, after a conflict of interest. Mr Justice Field handed down his judgment granting a permanent injunction debarring White & Case from acting for Pinchuk […]
By Jaime Jones On 29 January 2014, the European Commission announced that it had fined four producers of flexible polyurethane foam products a total of €114m (£94m) for their participation in a cartel. The commission found that Vita, Carpenter, Recticel and Eurofoam operated the cartel for the purposes of co-ordinating the sale prices of polyurethane […]
It is rare to hear someone argue that energy prices are low, or even that they are just right. The usual mantra is that energy prices are too high, that the energy market is dominated by a few large companies and that these companies unfairly skew the market for their own purposes. Although there is […]
In April 2012, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) referred the private healthcare market to the Competition Commission (CC) for investigation. The Enterprise Act 2002 gives the OFT power to make such a reference if it has reasonable grounds for suspecting that competition for the supply or acquisition of goods or services is not working effectively. […]
In the course of Nestlé’s battle for a trademark for the shape of its four-finger KitKat chocolate biscuit, Mr Justice Arnold has asked the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to clarify when a trademark can be said to have acquired distinctive character and when the shape of a product is capable of […]
A case mentioned in Wragge & Co’s September/October alert is, unsurprisingly, heading for the appeal court. The case of Siemens Hearing Instruments Ltd v Friends Life Ltd is due to be heard by the Court of Appeal in late March 2014. As you may recall from the piece in the September-October 2013 alert, the case centres on […]
Another set of regulations has been laid before Parliament, in anticipation of the new commercial rent arrears recovery (CRAR) procedure coming into force on 6 April 2014. In England and Wales, the process of seizing goods, and selling them to satisfy debts, is being modernised. The procedures that enforcement agents (who replace bailiffs) will have […]
In its May 2013 property update, Wragge & Co looked at whether a tenant who hands back out-of-date plant and machinery has complied with its repairing obligations. The High Court, in the case of Sunlife Europe Properties Ltd v Tiger Aspect Holdings Ltd, held that as long as the equipment is working there is no obligation […]
Wragge & Co reported in its November/December property update that the High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill received its first reading in the House of Commons on 25 November 2013. The bill, once enacted, will give consent for the first phase of the new high-speed rail project, including the powers to construct and operate the line […]
Implied periodic tenancy — one of the cases mentioned in Wragge & Co’s last property update — is heading to the Court of Appeal. Last month, we reported on the decision in Barclays Wealth Trustees (Jersey) Ltd v Erimus Housing Ltd. In that case, a housing association remained in occupation of office premises for almost three […]