Tag: E-commerce

Widening the net

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by Becket McGrath

As the National Security and Investment Bill (NSI Bill) nears the end of its passage through Parliament, further details of the regime are becoming clearer. Nevertheless, fundamental questions over how the regime will operate in practice remain. Consideration of the long prehistory of the Bill, and examination of how other new investment screening regimes are bedding in, may shed some light.

Click on the below links to read the full articles from the Competition Law Insight Volume 20, Issues 2 and 3.

Part 1 explores the UK’s new NSI regime as it takes shape and how the NSI Act implements a wholly new regime that will enable the UK Government to review a wide range of transactions for potential national security issues. Transactions involving the acquisition of control over, or of non-controlling investments in, entities active in certain specified sectors will be subject to mandatory notification and government approval before completion

Part 2 dives deeper into the intricacies of the NSI Act upon receiving Royal Assent on 29 April 2021. Although we now know the final form of the Act, significant uncertainties remain over its purpose, operation and impact. More positively, the government has taken some sensible steps to narrow the Act’s scope during its parliamentary passage.

These articles were originally published in Competition Law Insight, Volume 20 Issue 2 and 3, Cover Date 2021 © Informa UK Ltd 2021. For more information visit www.competitionlawinsight.com

Signs of Commission’s Verticals Focus Emerge in VBER Evaluation Document

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by Becket McGrath, Sarah Long and Aakash Kumbhat

On 8 September 2020, the European Commission (‘the Commission’) published the results of its evaluation of the Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (‘VBER’) and associated guidelines in the form of a Staff Working Document. 

The 232 page document summarises evidence received by the Commission from businesses, their advisers, consumer bodies and national competition authorities (‘NCAs’) in response to its consultation on the operation of the current vertical agreements regime.  It also takes account of the findings of the Commission’s E-commerce sector inquiry, which ran from 2015 to 2017, and a detailed ‘evaluation support study’ that was conducted by external consultants.  Although the document is primarily concerned with pulling together the wide-ranging views received through this process, which has been running since 2018, it does contain some broad conclusions and an indication of its priorities for updating the verticals regime.

To read the full note, click here.

E-commerce, brand equity and managing the Amazon marketplace: a response to the EC’s VBER consultation

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The EC’s consultation on the Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (VBER) and Vertical Guidelines (VGL) closed for comments on 27 May 2019. Euclid Law responded to the consultation, calling for greater clarity around restrictions on online marketplace sales in order to preserve brand equity. To support the response, Euclid Law also submitted an expert report entitled ‘Amazon and the growth in online marketplace sales’ by James Thomson, formally the business head of Amazon services, and now a partner at BuyBox Experts, a managed services agency supporting brands selling online. A full copy of our response is available here and the expert report is available here.

Sarah Long’s short LinkedIn opinion on the consultation is available here.