Maersk’s initiative consists of an article from Camila Holtse sharing insights and challenges faced, as global head of competition law for the company, when implementing and promoting antitrust compliance.
I am very delighted to be part of the Antitrust Compliance Summit & Awards Steering Committee together with other distinguished members.
The Italian Competition Authority strongly supports this much-needed initiative of Concurrences which contributes to promote and strengthen a competition culture at global level and I hope its innovative format will attract as many participant agencies as possible in sharing their experiences in evaluating compliance programmes for the purpose of potential fine reductions for businesses.
Since the adoption of our own guidelines in 2018, antitrust programmes in Italy have become an increasingly important component of businesses’ general compliance programmes. Our practice has shown that designing and implementing antitrust programmes is not a “box-checking exercise” and there is no “one size fits all” type of programme.
I believe this initiative, by exchanging best practices for successful antitrust compliance, will surely be of interest for our agency as well as many other competition agencies around the world.
Concurrences is recognizing the importance of compliance programs in the competition law field by staging a series of virtual conferences on the topic and giving awards to leaders in this field.
This is a very valuable contribution to our field. For too long competition law compliance has taken a back seat to other areas, especially anti-corruption. Much of the blame for this lies at the feet of competition law enforcers, who had refused to recognize compliance programs, preferring instead to focus only on collecting fines. In contrast, in other areas of law enforcement, the value of compliance and government’s role in recognizing and promoting it, was readily recognized. Recently this negative approach in competition law has started to change, and we now have an opportunity to see more energy, imagination and resources directed into competition law compliance.
Those who do the difficult work of competition law compliance deserve to be recognized and encouraged. At the same time, we need incentives to move beyond the old approaches of dusty manuals and legal lectures, into steps that make programs work – things like empowering compliance officers, dealing with incentives, evaluating what program steps actually are working.
Congratulations to Concurrences for its leadership in promoting competition law compliance efforts.
Antitrust compliance initiative proposed by this award summit is a creative mind rarely found in the traditional legal sector. The ideas to be innovative in antitrust compliance are proposed to better chart the evolution of the legal profession and will be presented in a way that is more useful, user-friendly and amusing for the audience of the antitrust compliance trainings.
A larger context of this initiative and the reason why I am interested in joining this event - in view of the ever-increasing deterrent effects of the penalties imposed on antitrust violations worldwide, the importance of an ex-ante mechanism of an antitrust compliance also rises accordingly to avoid any ‘ex post’ antitrust risks. Antitrust compliance has become a routine task for companies, law firms, enforcers and even academics to follow and work on in their daily life.
I congratulate Concurrences on their timely initiative of the Antitrust Compliance Summit & Awards. To highlight the importance of antitrust compliance at this moment is very welcome as we know that firms and managers are particularly tempted to engage in anticompetitive and collusive practices in times of crises.
We are firm believers that proactive competition law compliance by businesses of all sizes is an important factor in well-functioning markets. Accordingly, we welcome this effort to increase awareness of compliance best practices and to demonstrate through dialogue and recognition that a strong culture of compliance, supported by effective policies and procedures, makes good business sense.
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