Examples of First Conduct Rule in a sentence
An agreement that contravenes the First Conduct Rule is not restricted to an agreement between competitors.
Where more than one person constitutes the undertaking that the Commission has a reasonable cause to believe has contravened the First Conduct Rule, the Commission may issue an infringement notice to any or all of the persons it proposes to bring proceedings against for the undertaking’s contravention of the First Conduct Rule.
While the First Conduct Rule prohibits undertakings from entering into anti-competitive agreements, enforcement actions under the Ordinance may only be addressed to persons who have contravened or have been involved in a contravention of a competition rule.
The First Conduct Rule applies where there is an agreement or concerted practice.
This Subject Arrangement had the object of harming competition in Hong Kong and constitutes a contravention of the First Conduct Rule in section 6 of the Ordinance.
The Commission should be (and in our view is) obliged to prove to the requisite standard before the Tribunal not only that the agreement prevents, restricts or distorts competition but also that it is not excluded from the First Conduct Rule.
The First Conduct Rule may be contravened where there is a trilateral or multilateral agreement between two or more commercial customers and their common supplier.7 In this context, it does not matter whether or not the customers themselves ever had any direct contact.
It seems that the First Conduct Rule Guidelines should refer to this definition although the Competition Authorities may clarify that bid-rigging activities other than those covered by the Ordinance itself may fall within the definition of Serious Anti-competitive Conduct (including market allocation, output control or price fixing).
Paragraph 3.24 of the Revised Draft Guideline on the First Conduct Rule gives some guidance on how market power of the parties to an agreement will be assessed.
Therefore, the Competition Authorities may not be able to further define it as Section 5.4 of the First Conduct Rule Guidelines appears to do.