The recent experience of the Argentine competition authority

Abstract

When the new government was elected at the end of 2015, the new members of the Argentine Competition Commission (Comisión Nacional de Defensa de la Competencia, CNDC) were appointed. At that moment, the CNDC was a disregarded and discredited agency, with almost 500 pending antitrust and merger cases and an average review timeframe of 30 months. Competition compliance was not an issue in the agenda of firms operating in Argentina (national firms in particular), which were more concerned about inefficiencies and delays in the performance of the agency, than about fines and remedies. The new administration announced its intention to activate competition policy and to strengthen the powers of the Argentine Competition Commission...