Les clauses take or pay: des clauses originales et méconnues

Short Reads - The Court of Appeal of Arnhem-Leeuwarden ruled on 3 March 2020 that an accountant did not properly advise her client with respect to a sale of real estate (ECLI:NL:GHARL:2020:1875). In her research concerning the consequences of the sale, the accountant had failed to properly review the contracts between the seller and the financier of the real estate. The accountant had therefore acted unlawfully.

Short Reads - The European Court of Justice has found there is no shortcut for determining whether particular conduct can be held to have the object to restrict competition. A competition authority will always need to assess carefully whether the conduct reveals "a sufficient degree of harm to competition” before labelling it a ‘by object’ infringement. This is the case where there is sufficiently solid and reliable experience showing that this type of conduct is commonly regarded as being inherently anticompetitive.

Inside Stibbe - In a special Q&A (in Dutch), lawyers from our Amsterdam office share their legal expertise and strive to provide answers to questions put to us by consumers, self-employed persons, enterprises large and small, foundations and NGOs as a result of the corona crisis.

Short Reads - Competition authorities are temporarily ‘green-lighting’ certain collaboration initiatives to safeguard the supply of essential products in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. At the same time, authorities warn against using the current exceptional circumstances to engage in anti-competitive practices, such as price-fixing, excessive pricing, refusals to deal or opportunistic takeovers.