Welcome to the 15th edition of Cartel Intel!
As competition authorities across the EU and the UK continue to focus on cartel enforcement, this bulletin provides an update on key developments in recent months. In particular, we discuss the German Federal Cartel Office's fine imposed on Sennheiser and Sonova for resale price maintenance practices in the distribution of premium headphones, in which sales teams used coded language and digital tools to align resale prices within a selective distribution system. We also report on the Italian Competition Authority's investigation into the National Bar Council's "fair remuneration" rule, which the authority considers may restrict competition by dissuading lawyers from offering discounted fees, even in the absence of significant client bargaining power. We cover the Spanish National Court's annulment of fines imposed by the Spanish Competition Authority on several textbook publishers and a trade association, after the authority had corrected substantive elements of its decision outside the statutory time limit. We also analyse the EU General Court's ruling in the Symrise case, which upheld the European Commission's decision to conduct unannounced inspections based on its own intelligence and confirmed that the Commission may exercise its inspection powers under EU Regulation 1/2003, without a prior leniency application. Finally, we summarise the UK Competition and Markets Authority's guidance for higher education institutions, which outlines how universities can collaborate lawfully while avoiding infringements of competition law, including risks around fee coordination, market sharing, and the exchange of competitively sensitive information.
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