A number of entities are not very happy these days with the big three credit rating agencies. And that displeasure is stretched pretty much across the board, world-wide. Those who are displeased with recent ratings movements have been mulling over using competition policy and antitrust laws as a potential counter-attack; after all, there are only […]

Laura Atlee, Apr 17, 2012 Parent liability in cartel infringement proceedings has been the focus of quite a number of our commentaries. Starting with the Akzo ruling, the EU Courts have tightened the noose around each and every parent company’s financial neck. When a parent company has a 100 percent shareholding in a subsidiary it is presumed […]

Mark Patterson, Apr 17, 2012 The important competitive role played by information providers like credit-rating agencies is not matched by a well-developed competition analysis for the informational problems they pose. To be sure, competition law has developed approaches to some informational issues, such as collective suppression of information and misleading statements directed at competing products. But it […]

Norman Neyrinck, Nicolas Petit, Apr 17, 2012 Editor’s Note: This paper was originally published in the August 2011 issue of the CPI Antitrust Chronicle; however, given the appropriateness of the paper for this symposium and its continuing relevance, we are reprinting it. It will have taken policy makers an extra financial crisis to realize that […]

Lawrence White, Apr 17, 2012 The three major credit rating agencies-Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s (“S&P”), and Fitch-have attracted an increasing amount of media attention over the past five years. They were clearly central players in the housing bubble and collapse of the late 1990s through the mid 2000s and the financial debacle that followed, and […]

Albert Metz, Apr 17, 2012 Following the performance of structured finance securities in general and residential mortgage-backed securities (“RMBS”) related securities in particular, the reputations of the major credit rating agencies-Moody’s, S&P and Fitch-have suffered considerably. The core competency of rating agencies is now sometimes questioned even outside of structured finance. But are investors too […]

David Reichenberg, Apr 17, 2012 In recent years, the backdrop for antitrust class actions has increasingly been provided by technological innovation. Take the following hypothetical: Plaintiffs allege a conspiracy between providers of cell phone service resulting in the increase of cell phone plan prices over a six-year span, from 2006 to 2012. In 2006, when […]