ICN Annual Conference Starts 14th September

The International Competition Network (ICN) Annual Conference will take place 14th to 17th September 2020. Originally it was planned as an in-person conference in Los Angeles in May, but could not take place due to the corona virus pandemic. This will be the ICN’s first virtual annual conference. 

The ICN includes 140 competition agencies from 129 jurisdictions and provides a forum for competition agencies to address enforcement and policy issues of common interest. The conference is open to all ICN member agencies, as well as Non-Governmental Advisors (NGAs), competition experts from international organisations, the legal, business, academic, and consumer communities – and interested members of the general public. Registration is not required.

Topics to be discussed at the conference include; Competition Advocacy in the Digital Age, Digital Strategy of Competition Agencies, Digital Mergers, Unilateral Conduct Remedies, Particularly in Digital Markets, Big Data and Cartelisation.

The digital age represents new challenges not only for enforcement, but also for advocacy. Panelists will present concrete examples and discuss approaches to address specific competition advocacy challenges arising from digital markets, such as data privacy, consumer empowerment, and technical industry knowledge. 

The session on Digital Strategy of Competition Agencies will focus on how digitalisation is affecting the design and make-up of competition authorities. “Discussion topics will include the creation of digital teams and units, the recruitment of non-traditional staff, new demands on staff to be tech-savvy, and innovative approaches implemented to make competition agencies “digitally ready,” the ICN says.

At the last annual ICN conference, digitalisation and the evolution of merger analysis was a topic of much discussion. Since then, there have been further developments in the analysis, and digital mergers are still drawing much attention from agencies and NGAs. Speakers on the Digital Mergers session will explore how agencies are dealing with mergers in digital markets and discuss key issues which include characteristics of digital mergers (network effects, non-price effects, nascent competition, and conglomerate mergers), notification thresholds, market definition, the counterfactual, theories of harm, and merger remedies in the digital economy. 

The Unilateral Conduct session will discuss objectives, design, implementation and monitoring of remedies, including injunctive relief and interim measures in unilateral conduct cases in digital markets. Speakers will discuss the suitability of behavioural and structural remedies and explore the experience of ICN members imposing and monitoring such measures.

The ICN notes that the collection and processing of a large volume of data is a defining feature of today’s digitalised economy, and with the increasing role of big data on business strategies, everyone from competition enforcers and lawyers to academics and economists have sought to assess its impact in cartel enforcement.

Panelists will explore whether big data and algorithms can be used to implement new forms of cartels or to facilitate market coordination, and whether competition law is well-equipped in the fight against cartels in the digital era. 

ICN members produce work products through their involvement in flexible project-oriented and results-based working groups, and members of these groups work together largely by internet, telephone, teleseminars, and webinars. Where the ICN reaches consensus on recommendations, or “best practices,” arising from the projects, individual competition authorities decide whether and how to implement the recommendations, through unilateral, bilateral or multilateral arrangements, as appropriate. Botswana, through the Competition and Consumer Authority, Co-chairs the Agency Effectiveness Working Group.

Source: ICN, DoJ