Page 187 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Technology, innovation and competition

ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services
Technology, Innovation and Competition

3.3.2 Competition authorities

Competition authorities have tools that are clearly delimited by legislation and which are executed within
specific competition mandates. While they may have some of the powers outlined above for sectoral
35
regulators, their tools are usually a form of ex post intervention .
36
These include:

• Investigations: A regulator or competition authority may be able to initiate an investigation of anti-
competitive behaviour. This may be done either on its own accord or based on industry complaints. Such
investigation usually takes the form of a market review and analysis, and may include the sending of
questionnaires to all of the market participants and economic modeling. If, after the review, a competition
issue is indeed substantiated, the regulator may formally charge the relevant entity, whose final recourse
then is to appeal through the judiciary or a specific competition appeals body. Sanctions for a finding of a
breach of competition law may include fines, structural remedies, behavioural remedies, and possibility
criminal penalties, such as prison sentences. 37
• Injunctions/interdicts: Ability to request injunctions/interdicts to temporarily stop potential anti-
competitive behaviour before it can complete any necessary market review if the harm is immediate
and irreversible.
• Merger reviews: Ability to review certain types of mergers and acquisitions to ensure that they do not
raise any competition issues post-merger, and in many jurisdictions, the ability to render such mergers
and acquisitions conditional on its approval (possibly with conditions, including structural or behavioural
remedies). 38

35 A regulator’s tools may, and frequently are, also so delimited.
36 Except for merger reviews, which are ex ante.
37 Post investigation, they also have the ability to recommend, or force, an entity found to have been abusing its vertically-inte-
grated market power to split into two or more independent entities, or sell a component of its business.
38 For example, mergers and/or acquisition that create entities with large overlapping market share in certain sectors may need to
be notified to the regulator or competition authority prior to being implemented.

163