Transformations of competition law

This one-day conference is co-organised by the Centre for Law, Economics and Society at UCL and the Global Competition Law Centre at the College of Europe, Bruges.

The conference is convened by:

• Professor Ioannis Lianos, UCL
• Dr. Damien Gerard, College of Europe & Université Catholique de Louvain.

The conference will explore the “liminal conditions of modern competition law” (Lianos, 2017), in particular the various transformations that are taking place globally and may affect the direction of the competition law enterprise. Four transformations emerge as being particularly challenging for mainstream competition law doctrine. The conference will therefore be divided into four panels dealing with each of these areas:

• The political dimension of competition law: protectionism and populism, free trader and globalism
• The financialisation challenge: common and joint ownership
• Technological transformations and the emergence of a new competition law
• “Social” and “Green” capitalism: towards a social and green antitrust?

Confirmed speakers include:

• Dennis Davis (Competition Appeal Court of South Africa & University of Cape Town)
• Carles Esteva-Mosso (European Commission)
• Amelia Fletcher (FCA & University of East Anglia)
• Michal Gal (University of Haifa)
• Damien Geradin (Tilburg University & UCL)
• Damien Gerard (College of Europe & Université Catholique de Louvain)
• Herbert Hovenkamp (University of Pennsylvania Law School & Warton School of Business)
• Alexey Ivanov (HSE/Skolkovo Institute for Law and Development)
• Dimitry Katalevsky (HSE/Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology)
• Suzanne Kingston (University College Dublin)
• Ioannis Kokkoris (CCLS, Queen Mary University of London)
• Assimakis Komninos (White & Case & UCL)
• Ioannis Lianos (UCL)
• Bjorn Lundqvist (Stockholm University)
• Barry Lynn (New America)
• Oke Odudu (University of Oxford)
• Sir Peter Roth (Competition Appeal Tribunal)
• Maarten Pieter Schinkel (University of Amsterdam)
• Maurice Stucke (UT College of Law)
• Mike Walker (Competition and Markets Authority)
• Tim Wu (Columbia Law School)

About the conference panels

The conference will explore the “liminal conditions of modern competition law” (Lianos, 2017), in particular the various transformations that are taking place globally and may affect the direction of the competition law enterprise. Four transformations emerge as being particularly challenging for mainstream competition law doctrine.

The first transformation is the increasing role of the “political content” (Pitofsky, 1979) of competition law. Mainstream competition law relies on a distinction between technocratic objectives that are purportedly those pursued by competition law on the basis of allegedly “value-neutral” economic expertise, on the one hand, and politics (or policy) assumed to be value-oriented and therefore conflictual, on the other hand. However, the ruinous financial crisis of 2008 and the political turmoil following the surge of populist movements around the world, the retreat to protectionism and economic nationalism, as well as the emergence of citizen movements contesting the economic and moral foundations of financial capitalism, have all brought politics to the fore of competition law, with a number of calls being made to reorient or simply abandon the current antitrust paradigm. The panel will explore how this increased politicization may affect competition law and if it is, or not, a good thing for the competition law field.

The second transformation relates to one of the perceived reasons for the financial crisis, the financialisation movement, that is the increasing influence of global financial markets in the real economy. This movement started in the early to mid-1970s and has since taken unprecedented proportions. It has led to phenomenal leveraging, but also to increasing levels of stealth concentration, as a few institutional investors control large parts of the global economy. Indeed, some have highlighted the “rise of distorporation” in the modern global economy (The Economist, 2013), major industrial empires being controlled by master limited partnerships (MLP) managed by a few global big-equity companies and institutional investors. This raises of course questions with respect to the potential of these cross-ownerships or common ownerships to lead to anticompetitive effects, if not to limit economic democracy. Should competition law adapt itself to the fact that competition does not primarily take place in product markets but that its more significant component in the era of financial capitalism is competition for capital? This is of course a complex area in view of the role perceptions, human desires and feelings playing in markets involving financial assets (Tuckett, 2011), but it raises the question of whether we should re-conceive competition law intervention in these markets.

The third transformation has of course everything to do with technological revolutions brought by the computing industry, and its more recent progress in artificial intelligence, robotisation and machine learning technologies. These revolutions brought to center stage issues that were thought until then to form part of separate fields of law, such as personal data protection and privacy law, and have increased the risks to competition arising, e.g., from network effects, while largely altering the way competition takes place among firms active in these markets. Competition between firms takes unexpected forms, such as competing for consumers’ attention (or eyeballs), eventually profiling them and using algorithms in order to predict and possibly manipulate their behaviour. These developments thus require a renewal of the theoretical frameworks of competition law and the development of new concepts and tools. The expansion of information markets from the field of computing to that of bio-engineering, and the convergence of digital, physical, and biological technologies (Schwab, 2016) raise of course important challenges for the existing theoretical framework of competition law and the way it perceives competitive interactions and markets.

The fourth transformation constitutes an epiphenomenon of the previous ones and emerges out of the perceived need to transform capitalist economies without nevertheless abandoning capitalism. This movement has been so far given rise to the slogans of “Green capitalism” (or “Eco-capitalism”) (Berghoff & Rome, 2017) and “Social capitalism” (Kersbergen, 1991; DeMichele, 2016), which include various components such as the development of corporate social responsibility, non-contractualist views of the corporation and its aims, the emergence of a strong non-profit sector, and the development of the “fair trade” movement. Collective action in order to achieve the objectives of “Green” and “Social” capitalism may take various forms, occasionally engendering anti-competitive effects, if it leads to greater co-operation between firms, standardisation of products and processes, and the development of tightly controlled value chains. Should competition law take stock of these changes, and how, if this is the case, will “Green” and “Social” antitrust look like?

The programme

9:00 Registration

9.10 Panel 1: Roundtable: The political dimension of competition law: protectionism and populism, free trader and globalism

Chair: Paul Mason (The Guardian) TBC

Speakers:
Herb Hovenkamp (University of Pennsylvania Law School & Warton School of Business)
Dennis Davis (Competition Appeal Court of South Africa & University of Cape Town)
Barry Lynn (New America)
Mike Walker (Competition and Markets Authority)

Commentators: Michal Gal (University of Haifa), Alexey Ivanov (HSE/Skolkovo Institute for Law and Development) & Tim Wu (Columbia Law School)

Coffee break 11.10- 11.30 am

11.30 Panel 2: The financialisation challenge: common and joint ownership

Chair: Dennis Davis (Competition Appeal Court of South Africa & University of Cape Town)

Speakers
Amelia Fletcher (FCA & University of East Anglia)
Ioannis Lianos (UCL) and Dimitry Katalevsky (HSE/Skolkovo Institute for Law and Development)
Mike Walker (Competition and Markets Authority)
Carles Esteva-Mosso (European Commission)
Jose Azar (IESE Business School, University of Navarra)

Commentators: Herb Hovenkamp (University of Pennsylvania Law School & Warton School of Business), Ioannis Kokkoris (CCLS, Queen Mary University of London)

13.15-14.15 Lunch break

14.15 Panel 3: Technological transformations and the emergence of a new competition law

Chair: Sir Peter Roth (Competition Appeal Tribunal)

Speakers
Maurice Stucke (UT College of Law)
Tim Wu (Columbia Law School)
Michal Gal (University of Haifa)
Bjorn Lundqvist (Stockholm University)
Damien Geradin (Tilburg University & UCL)
Guillaume Loriot (European Commission) TBC

16.00 – 16.20 Coffee break

16.20 Panel 4: “Social” and “Green” capitalism: towards a social and green antitrust?

Chair: Damien Gerard (College of Europe & Université Catholique de Louvain)

Speakers:
Maarten Pieter Schinkel (University of Amsterdam)
Suzanne Kingston (University College Dublin)
Assimakis Komninos (White & Case & UCL)
Oke Odudu (University of Oxford)

Commentators: Barry Lynn (New America), Chris Townley (King’s College London )TBC & Florian Wagner-von Papp (UCL) TBC

18.00 Cocktail reception

Queries?

If you have any queries about this event please contact the UCL Laws events team – laws-events@ucl.ac.uk