In recent years, CCS has received feedback that the business community has faced sharp increases in industrial property prices and rentals. The concerns were that these increases were caused by the growing presence of REITs in the industrial property market and/or private property players’ acquisitions of industrial properties that were previously owned by JTC. To ascertain this, CCS carried out a market study on this market, with inputs from commercial real estate services company, Colliers International.
Competition Commission of Singapore Blog
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Industrial property market study by CCS
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Mergers and Acquisitions involving SMEs
Should SMEs be concerned about the Competition Act’s prohibition against anti-competitive mergers? How does CCS handle and assess mergers, and what should SMEs do if they are planning to merge?
Mergers may bring benefits to businesses and consumers
Mergers and acquisitions (“mergers”) may bring about benefits to both businesses and consumers. When smaller businesses merge, the enhanced resources and capabilities may put them in a better position to compete more effectively with their larger rivals.
Mergers enable companies to expand quickly. The greater scale of operations may help companies to achieve cost savings. Indeed, the Economic Strategies Committee in 2010 urged companies to “consolidate or acquire other players where necessary to build up scale and efficiency”. Such increase in the scale of operations may also encourage companies to engage in R&D, as this usually incurs high costs on the part of the companies. R&D can in turn spur innovation, bringing about new and better products or services for customers.
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My internship experience at CCS (3 – 28 December 2012)
As a penultimate law student contemplating the direction of my future career path, I found myself wavering on whether I should enter the private or public sector upon graduation. Having only done internships with local private firms and volunteering at a community legal centre in Melbourne previously, I lacked the understanding of how statutory boards and ministries operate within the public service to make an informed decision.
The 4-week internship at the Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) under the Singapore Legal Service (SLS) Internship Programme provided me with an insight into the public sector and a better understanding of CCS’ regulatory role in the field of competition law. For someone who is considering joining SLS, just being in the same office as CCS legal officers was already a beneficial experience as it gave me a glimpse of how life in the public sector is like.
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Strong Competition Regime Critical Success Factor for Economic Competitiveness
Singapore is expected to experience a relatively low growth rate of between 1% to 3% in 2013. Against a challenging backdrop of weak external demand and fierce global competition, it becomes even more imperative that Singapore creates conditions that are favourable to businesses and investors, and strengthens the ability of Singapore-based companies to compete. Maintaining open and competitive markets in Singapore is critical to build strong players that can operate efficiently and innovatively, and become internationally competitive.
A strong and robust competition regime, where competition policy and law is enforced consistently and transparently, is a critical success factor.
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Moving ahead with the ASEAN Economic Community
The ASEAN Economic Community (“AEC”) blueprint was signed by the ASEAN Leaders at the 13th ASEAN Summit in 2007. Essentially, the AEC blueprint aims to turn ASEAN into an integrated economic region by 2015. The measures required to achieve this vision are listed and categorized into four key areas: (a) a single market and production base, (b) a highly competitive economic region, (c) a region of equitable economic development, and (d) a region fully integrated into the global economy.
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Some thoughts about ‘object restrictions’
It is well-known that Article 101 TFEU (like section 34 of the Singaporean Competition Act) prohibits agreements that have as their ‘object or effect’ the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition, subject to the ‘efficiency’ defence provided for in Article 101(3) (or paragraph 9 of the Third Schedule of the Competition Act). As long ago as 1966 the European Court of Justice established, in Société Technique Minière, that, if an agreement has the object of restricting competition, Article 101(1) is infringed without there being any need to further prove that the agreement has anti-competitive effects. This simple rule has been repeatedly affirmed in the Court’s jurisprudence.
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Competition Compliance Is Part of Good Corporate Governance
In a recent survey of stakeholders that covered over 400 businesses, 200 consumers, competition practitioners and public sector agencies, about 42% of business respondents indicated that their top leadership strongly advocated compliance with competition law in Singapore.
However, only 37% had compiled instructions on compliance for their employees, and 32% regularly conducted training on this aspect.
6 years after the Competition Act came into force on 1 January 2006, there remains much work to be done to educate businesses on the do’s and don’ts of the competition regime.
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Competition Law in ASEAN: Why the need for a macro-perspective?
Lim Chong Kin
Director (Corporate Advisory, Compliance and Transaction)
Drew & Napier LLC
July 19, 2012
06:29 PM SGTIn the last two years, there have been significant developments in the region in the area of competition law and policy – Hong Kong has just passed its competition law in June 2012, while Malaysia’s new Competition Act has been effective since January 2012. In the Philippines, there have also been positive developments on a competition bill in the Senate and House.
In particular, it is expected that more countries in the ten member economic bloc known as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (“ASEAN”), will introduce competition law over the next few years. The bloc has set a common goal of achieving greater integration by 2015[1], with the aim of making ASEAN more dynamic and competitive. As part of the goals set by the ASEAN leaders, ASEAN member countries will endeavour to introduce competition policy by 2015 in order to remove private barriers set up to impede market entry and retard competition. Currently, only five of the ten ASEAN member countries have a generic competition law in place, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore,Thailand and Vietnam.
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Singapore’s Competition Appeal Board delivers landmark decision in abuse of dominance case
On 28 May 2012, the Competition Appeal Board of Singapore (CAB) delivered a landmark decision on the law of abuse of dominance in the SISTIC case. SISTIC was Singapore’s leading ticketing services provider and the conduct in question arose from SISTIC’s requirement in a number of Exclusive Agreements that venues (such as the Esplanade and the Singapore Indoor Stadium) and event promoters use SISTIC and no other ticketing service. The CAB upheld CCS’ finding that SISTIC was dominant in the market for ticketing services and that SISTIC had abused its dominant position, thereby infringing s 47 of the Competition Act.
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What people think I do / what I really do
Have you ever come across those series of pictures “what people think I do / what I really do” on the internet about various professional jobs? If there is one about antitrust, I bet that “what people think I do” would be price regulation (let me skip “what I really do” here since it is too long to explain).
In the course of my work, I meet the business community regularly to explain what CCS does. My job is to help them understand the basics of competition law, but there is often an expectation gap – we tell people that competition is good and that the law protects your interest, and yet when they felt that prices are not competitive in some markets (petrol and taxi being the usual ones), they wonder why we are not taking action [the usual Legal Disclaimer: what the blogger writes here does not represent the official position of CCS].
