Internationalization and Harmonization

Another important trend is the increasing harmonization occurring amongst the international antitrust enforcement agencies. Today, we see cooperation among U.S. agencies and the European Commission and different authorities in the U.K. and Germany that we have not seen in the past. I think everyone has an interest in cooperating. It is certainly frustrating for companies to be faced with conflicting modes of competition analysis and disparate procedures and inconsistent data requests . Companies want a license or distribution arrangement to be assessed similarly in all major jurisdictions. They want an acquisition to be assessed similarly and with similar data. In some respects, it does not matter so much whether the harmonization is the best possible, as long as approaches are harmonized.

We also will see continued pressure for standardization of antitrust rules from both large companies and, increasingly, smaller companies as they become just as international. From the government side, there is the recognition that it does not benefit anyone to simply point fingers and say, "Well, you analyzed it this way because you were favoring your countrys manufacturer at the expense of ours." Such harmonization of competition rules is inherently difficult; progress will be slow and fitful. But there is every reason to expect, in view of the economic and political dynamics supporting it, that international harmonization of antitrust standards and approaches will progress.