This presentation by Carolina Abate from the OECD Competition Division, was made during the discussion on “Competition law and state-owned enterprises”, held during the 17th OECD Global Forum on Competition on 30 November 2018. More documents and presentations on this topic can be found at oe.cd/csoes.

1. Competition Law And
State-Owned Enterprises
Presentation by the Secretariat
Global Forum on Competition
30th November 2018

2. • SOE’s anticompetitive behaviour as harmful as POE’s
• Fundamental role of neutral and rigorous antitrust
enforcement to level the playing field
• Investigations can impose a variety of challenges due to
the distinctive nature of state-owned entities
• Additional difficulties if foreign SOEs are involved in
investigations
Introduction

3. • Most competition standards are based on the logic of
private sector and profit maximising economic players
• Different accounting standards and lack of transparency
regarding costs  difficult for agencies to obtain
information
• Effectiveness of different kinds of sanctions
• Role of government ties
Cross-cutting practical challenges

4. Enforcement challenges: specific
conducts
Mergers
 Notion of
group
 Calculation
of turnover
 Cross-border
transactions
Cartels
 Definition
economic
unit
 Turnover for
calculations
of fines
 Dawn raids
Unilateral
conduct
 Use of cross-
subsidization
 Recoupment
test
 Cost-
benchmarks

5. • Risk that SOE’s specific characteristics can lead to under
(or over) enforcement
• An effects-based analytical framework is sufficiently
flexible to accommodate these differences
• Factors that create challenges have to be constantly
taken into account and assessed on a case-by-case
basis
• Limiting the exemptions, derogations, and non-
efficiency based defenses essential for the functioning of
competitive markets
Conclusion