European Commission objects to Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems

The European Commission has issued a formal 'statement of objections' over Oracle's planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems which had earlier obtained the approval of the U.S Department of Justice which expressed that the deal was unlikely to be anti-competitive. Oracle made public its plan to acquire Sun for USD 7.4 Billion in April this year.
The primary concern of the European Commission is Sun's open source MySQL database product. The acquisition by Oracle would have negative effects for the database products market with Oracle also marketing its own 'enterprise' database products.
Oracle in the meanwhile has asserted that the acquisition would not be anti-competitive, especially in the database market since MySQL is open source and it cannot be controlled by any entity. It asserted that the database products market had at least eight strong players including IBM and Microsoft. Oracle argues that the deal is essential for competition in the high-end server market claiming that the deal would revitalise Sun's Sparc processor and Solaris OS platforms. Sourced from: Reuters

Power transformer producers fined for market sharing cartel

Seven companies- ABB, AREVA T&D SA, Siemens, Toshiba, Hitachi, Fuji electrics and ALSTOM SA, have been fined 67.6 Million Euros (around 460 Crores in INR) for operating a market sharing cartel selling transformers in the European Economic Area and Japan. The cartel was in operation from around June, 1999 to May, 2003. The companies involved met once or twice in a year in either Asia or Europe, used code names and went to great lengths to hide their illegal actions.
Siemens was granted immunity from the fine under the leniency programme, which was introduced since it was very difficult to gather evidence on cartels without insider support. Under a similar provision on the Competition Act in India, any participant in a cartel who comes forth before investigations are complete and offers full and unconditional cooperation can be exempted from fines.
The cartel is reminiscent of the Lysine cartel which was exposed by the FBI and subsequently had to pay a huge fine apart from federal prison terms for top officials of Archer Daniels Midland. The company also had to settle a class action lawsuit later. The transformers cartel may also face lawsuits from victims of the cartel in national courts and the EC's fine is not inclusive of potential fines that former members of the cartel might incur or payments they might have to make in these lawsuits. For more information see: EC Press Release

ECJ dismisses Akzo Nobel appeal

The European Court of Justice has dismissed an appeal by Akzo Nobel of a 2007 judgement by the Court of First Instance. The fine was originally imposed by the European Commission in 2004 for cartel activities related to the sale of Chlorine Chloride, a feed additive. Subsequently the matter went on appeal to the Court of First Instance and then the European Court of Justice, and both courts have affirmed the findings of the Commission. The case is important since it established that a parent company can be held liable for anti-competitive behaviour of its subsidiaries even if did not itself participate in those activities. For more on the case and a press release by the European Commission welcoming the decision of the ECJ, visit: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/09/385&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en