News about the Global Competition Law and Economics Series Conferences

Competition Law and the State, 18/19 March 2011, Hong Kong

How is competition law impacting on governments across the world? That is the key question addressed at a major international conference, organized by the centre for Law, Economics and Society at UCL that has been held at Hong Kong on 18 and 19 March 2011 and attended by senior policy makers from around the world.

This is an issue relevant to decision makers and citizens around the world. The recent adoption of competition law statutes in east and south Asia, culminating with the enactment of the Indian Competition Act and the Chinese Antimonopoly Law, mark a significant development for the global business community. In the UK, the Government is planning a major revamp of public services with a view to opening these to a range of providers competing to offer a better service.

Among the conference's keynote speakers was His Excellency, Gregory So, Undersecretary for the Commerce and Economic Development of the SAR Hong Kong and John Fingleton, chief executive of the UK Office for Fair Trading, who supervised the preparation of the OFT's Report "Government in Markets: why competition matters - a guide for policy makers" published in 2010 and providing a framework for analysing government's interaction with markets, and a guide to policy markets who are faced with setting up, influencing or regulating markets.

No less than twelve heads and high officials from competition authorities around the world and international organizations (United States, European Union, China, Japan, India, Mexico, Greece, Singapore, OCDE, ICN,) and twenty academics (lawyers and economists), lawyers from private practice and economic consultants have contributed to this conference and have exchanged views on this important topic. This is the first international conference focusing on the application of competition law to state action worldwide and forms part of the Centre for Law, Economics and Society at UCL increasing engagement with global competition law.

Dr Ioannis Lianos, director of the UCL Centre for Law, Economics and Society at the Faculty of Laws, co-director of the Global Competition Law and Economics series and joint organiser of the event with the University of Hong Kong, says: "Without doubt, the application of competition law to governement restrictions to competition has incurred a profound transformation during the last thirty years, with the dislocation of state monopolies and the turn to competitive markets and deregulation in utilities and network industries in many parts of the world".

"Of course, every society has to make its own decisions on the appropriate level of state intervention and the respective role of regulation and competition law. Social norms, institutional structures and arrangements, vested interests and ideology are some of the factors that influence these choices. The interaction between the various competition law regimes and different perceptions of how public services should be provided raises important challenges for policy makers and more generally comparative and global competition law scholars, and this has been the broad theme of the conference."

The conference attracted considerable attention from the general public with more than 150 attendants coming from major corporations, law firms based in Hong Kong and the region and governemnt officials. In addition, the recent proposal of a competition law bill by the Governement of Hong Kong has been an important focus of the conference and led to wide media coverage with interviews of conference participants (download the article) an interview of visiting professor at UCL Judge Frederic Jenny and Dr. Ioannis Lianos by South China Morning Post).