The Antimonopoly Committee Of Ukraine: Highlights Of Year 2017

During the VII International Competition Policy Forum, which was held in Kyiv on 15 March 2018, the Chairman of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (the "AMC") Yuriy Terentyev presented the Annual Report of the AMC for 2017. Traditionally, this document provides a summary and statistics of the AMC's activities during the year and demonstrates examples of the most extraordinary cases handled by the AMC while highlighting the most important trends and tendencies of competition policy and its enforcement in Ukraine. The most significant facts are outlined below.

• Last year, the AMC actively demonstrated its legislative initiatives, in particular, the AMC issued Typical Requirements for Vertical Concerted Practices of Economic Entities and Guidance on Increases in the Efficiency of control Over Economic Concentrations for Undertakings Subject to Sanctions. The AMC also produced a draft Methodology of Market Definition and draft Guidance on the Assessment of Non-horizontal Mergers which are currently under public discussion and are subject to further revisions prior to finalization.
• The priority industry sectors for the AMC in 2017 were the pharmaceutical, fuel and energy, and telecommunications sectors, as well as transport and consumer goods areas.
• The AMC defined markets and spheres that will be in focus for 2018, namely the natural gas market, market of mobile communications services, light oil products market, market of banking services, railway transportation market, unfair business practices in the retail sphere, activities of seaports and airports, and others.
• Abuses of dominant (monopoly) position (795 cases) and anticompetitive practices of state bodies (610 cases) continued to be the most common violations of Ukrainian competition law during 2017.
• The highest fines for 2017 were imposed for anticompetitive concerted practices (including distortion of a public tender, entering into distribution agreements leading to limitation of competition on the market). The AMC investigated 317 cases of anticompetitive concerted practices while the biggest combined fine for this type of violation reached approximately EUR 409 million in the fuel industry and EUR 4.1 million in the pharmaceutical sector.
• 2017 saw an increase in the number of merger filings submitted to the AMC for clearance of concentrations to 666 (against 547 in 2016), with the biggest share attributed to foreign applicants and companies with foreign investment (439 applications).
• The number of unfair business practices cases investigated by the AMC in 2017 totaled 256. Approximately 81% of these violations (208 cases) were qualified as "gaining competitive advantages by disseminating inaccurate information".
• In 2017, 22.7% of the AMC's decisions (i.e. 239) were challenged in court, while only 3.1% of these decisions were recognized by courts as invalid in whole or in part.

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