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10. Competition Talk of the BWB on 1.4.2014

On the 1 April 2014, the 10 Competition Talk organized by the BWB at premises of the Hotel "Stefanie", took place.

Moderated by the office manager Dr. Peter Matousek, Mag. Karin Mair (CFE), Dr. Johannes Paha (University Giessen) and Dr. Johannes Willheim, M.B.L.-HSG took part in the discussion about the exciting and impressive demand on compliance.

Dr. Thanner welcomed all participants and underlined that a sensitization in the fields of compliance and antitrust law is essential nowadays.

The issue compliance had not been chosen coincidentally for the 10th jubilee edition of the Competition Talks.

Firstly, Dr. Paha, academic assistant at the institute for industrial economic and competition policy and regulation of the University in Giessen, came as a substitute for Prof. Theresia Theurl, who was not able to attend due to personal reasons. Dr. Paha referred to the recently published PwC-Study, which shows that businesses are currently implementing compliance programs. However, antitrust law still plays a minor part. The mentioned reasons for this are the high costs regarding compliance measures and the lack of awareness for antitrust law.

As second speaker Dr. Willheim stipulated, that Compliance is not anchored by law. He refers to the Compliance Handbook of the European Commision (Compliance) which was published in a time, when compliance was more a theoretical matter.

However in the meantime compliance has reached the practice and the establishment of compliance programs has a legal effect.

Even if compliance programs have no extenuating cause for the calculation of fines, it helps to discover infringements and to stop immediately or to submit proof of its innocence. An immediate stopping of anti-competitive behavior constitutes an extenuating cause pursuant to § 30 KartG.

Dr. Willheim refers to the guidelines of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC Antitrust Compliance Toolkit, BWB reported in Nov. 2013).

Last but not least Mag. Karin Mair of Deloitte presented the forensic aspect of Compliance. The forensic expert understood it to point out, that the actual perceptiion of businesses differs from the operative processes. Her forensic work includes regular investigations such as those of the BWB. As antitrust law is a complex overlapping matter, it requires legal plus information technology support.

She summarized, that an 'one fits all'-solution in this field is not advisable, it is more important to adjust measures depending on the specific business.

Vortrag von Dr. Paha
Vortrag von Dr. Willheim
Vortrag von Mag. Mair

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