Private an­ti­trust lit­ig­a­tion in Aus­tria has sub­stan­tially in­creased in re­cent years. To a large ex­tent, this growth can be at­trib­uted to an in­crease of car­tel court de­cisions im­pos­ing fines against car­tel mem­bers based on in­tens­i­fied en­force­ment activ­ity of the Aus­tri­an Fed­er­al Com­pet­i­tion Au­thor­ity (FCA) and the Aus­tri­an Fed­er­al Car­tel Pro­sec­utor (with the de­cision in the El­ev­at­ors and Es­cal­at­ors car­tel case be­ing the show-starter). On the basis of these de­cisions find­ing vi­ol­a­tions of an­ti­trust law, the Aus­tri­an Su­preme Court (OGH) in sev­er­al cases has af­firmed the pos­sib­il­ity of claims for dam­ages for dir­ectly dam­aged parties as well as for in­dir­ectly dam­aged parties, in­clud­ing cases where dam­ages were al­legedly caused by car­tel out­siders (um­brella pri­cing).The com­plete "The Private Com­pet­i­tion en­force­ment Re­view" is avail­able via down­load.

Com­pan­ies act­ing in the food sup­ply chain for 2021 should re­vise their sup­ply agree­ments and har­mon­ise their busi­ness prac­tices with the new na­tion­al laws im­ple­ment­ing Dir­ect­ive (EU) 2019/633 on un­fair trad­ing prac­tices in B2B re­la­tion­ships in the ag­ri­cul­tur­al and food sup­ply chain. The un­fair trad­ing prac­tices (so-called UT­Ps) scheme must be trans­posed to na­tion­al le­gis­la­tions by 1 May 2021. WHAT? The UT­Ps scheme seeks to com­bat B2B prac­tices in the ag­ri­cul­tur­al and food sup­ply chain that grossly de­vi­ate from good com­mer­cial con­duct, are con­trary to good faith and fair deal­ing, and are uni­lat­er­ally im­posed by one trad­ing part­ner on an­oth­er. In short, the in­ten­tion of the rules is to shield ag­ri­cul­tur­al pro­du­cers or any nat­ur­al or leg­al per­son selling ag­ri­cul­tur­al and food products from UT­Ps. The Dir­ect­ive en­vis­ages that na­tion­al laws will ap­point com­pet­ent au­thor­it­ies to en­force the UTP rules. WHO? The rules are not auto­mat­ic­ally ap­plic­able to all sup­pli­er-buy­er re­la­tion­ships. The rules ap­ply when there is a sig­ni­fic­ant im­bal­ance in ne­go­ti­ation power, which is as­sessed by com­par­ing the an­nu­al turnovers of the parties. HOW? Pre­cau­tion­ary meas­ures for de­term­in­ing busi­ness re­la­tion­ship con­di­tions must be ap­plied since na­tion­al laws have a wide dis­cre­tion in de­fin­ing the UT­Ps, provided that at least those spe­cified in the Dir­ect­ive are in­cluded. The list of UT­Ps is di­vided in­to prac­tices that are al­ways for­bid­den (e.g., pay­ment peri­ods longer than 30 or 60 days (de­pend­ing on the type of products), uni­lat­er­ally chan­ging cer­tain terms of a sup­ply agree­ment, etc.) and those for­bid­den de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances (e.g., re­quir­ing the sup­pli­er to bear the costs of dis­counts or ad­vert­ising, or to ac­cept back un­sold products without the ob­lig­a­tion of the buy­er to pay for them or for their dis­pos­al).

US-based Mod­ine Man­u­fac­tur­ing Com­pany, a di­ver­si­fied glob­al lead­er in thermal man­age­ment tech­no­logy and solu­tions, is selling part of its European air-cooled auto­mot­ive busi­ness, in­clud­ing its man­u­fac­tur­ing...

Aus­tri­a's lead­ing tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions com­pany is fur­ther ex­pand­ing its en­ter­prise di­vi­sion. With the ac­quis­i­tion of Alc­a­tel-Lu­cent Voice Busi­ness, the clas­sic tele­phony busi­ness of tech­no­logy ser­vice pro­vider...

The Aus­tri­an mer­ger con­trol re­gime is set out in Part I, Chapter 3 of the Aus­tri­an Car­tel Act 2005 (KartG). The turnover thresholds that trig­ger a mer­ger fil­ing re­quire­ment in Aus­tria are among the low­est...

Dus­sel­dorf/Vi­enna -  In or­der to drive for­ward the de­vel­op­ment of hy­dro­gen mo­bil­ity, the two auto­mot­ive sup­pli­ers El­ringK­linger and Plastic Om­ni­um will cre­ate a joint ven­ture for the de­vel­op­ment...

Fin­an­cial de­tails of the trans­ac­tion were not dis­closed, and clos­ing re­mains sub­ject to ap­prov­al by an­ti­trust au­thor­it­ies.Read the full art­icle here.

Bechtle AG has ac­quired data­formers GmbH, a soft­ware de­veloper based in Linz. The IT Group has thus ac­quired the hun­dredth com­pany in its his­tory. With this ac­quis­i­tion, Bechtle fur­ther ex­pands its IT...

Over the past one and a half years, to­geth­er with Pay­ment Ser­vices Aus­tria (PSA), the Oes­ter­reichis­che Na­tion­al­bank (OeNB) (the Aus­tri­an Cent­ral Bank) has laid the found­a­tion for mod­ern­ising the pro­cessing...

The Aus­tri­an leg­al re­gime reg­u­lat­ing mar­ket dom­in­ance is set out in Part II (Sec­tions 4 to 6) of the Aus­tri­an Car­tel Act (KartG), stip­u­lat­ing the pro­hib­i­tion on ab­us­ing a (single or col­lect­ive) dom­in­ant...