COMPETITION LAW AND SOME DEADPAN HUMOUR
May 27, 2009
A fascinating briefing for members this morning from Maclay Murray & Spens on ‘Competition Law in the Credit Crunch'. Michael Dean and Catriona Munro gave us the benefit of their extensive experience and explained just how intrusive and unforgiving the law now is in this area.
They also revealed a diverting passage in the Commission Decision (a corpus not normally noted for its laughter quotient) relating to the competition case against some Austrian banks - the ‘Lombard Club'. The case led to some very heavy fines for some banks, essentially for running a cartel. So it was serious business. But one paragraph about the banks' case merits quoting in full, either for its masterful deadpan or for its amazing lack of irony, depending on what you think about the translator's sense of humour (the paper states at the outset that ‘only the German text is authentic'):
"In the banks' view, the committees should be seen in
terms of a social phenomenon with a group dynamic,
rather than as a forum for restrictive agreements. The
banks refer to the ‘social significance' of the cartel
talks and even identify ‘social pressure' to take part. All
the banks would like their involvement in the cartel to
be understood as a purely passive, commercially irrelevant
(or in any event neutral as to its effects) presence
at ordinary (but basically tiresome) sector events that
they were obliged to attend. They ‘wanted to be there' or
‘take part' for reasons of social prestige."
Please look out for details of forthcoming SFE events, which will be neither commercially irrelevant nor basically tiresome, on our website.
Owen
27 May
