Se han quedado calvos

“Whether the European Union's Takeover Directive should have adopted a mandatory neutrality rule has been the subject of much debate. As the European Commission commences its review of the Directive this debate is being reignited. A view is crystallising that the success and failure of the Directive can, in large part, be measured by the number of Member States that have opted-in, or out of the neutrality principle, or have opted-in subject to the reciprocity option. The contestability of European corporations is viewed through this lens as a function of the extent to which EU Member States have adopted an unqualified neutrality rule. This article takes issue with this viewpoint. It argues that the pre-Directive debate and the post-Directive assessment have failed to consider the core lesson of takeover defences in the United States, namely that the construction of defences and their potency are a function of basic corporate law rules. If corporate law rules do not enable the construction of takeover defences, or undermine the extent to which they can be potently deployed, then the adoption or rejection of the neutrality principle in Member States is of trivial significance. This article explores the triviality hypothesis in three central EU jurisdictions: the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy. It concludes that, although there is variable scope to construct and deploy takeover defences in these jurisdictions, the triviality thesis is well founded”.

Gerner-Beuerle, Carsten, Kershaw, David and Solinas, Matteo Alfredo, Is the Board Neutrality Rule Trivial? Amnesia About Corporate Law in European Takeover Regulation (March 30, 2011). LSE Legal Studies Working Paper No. 3/2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1799291

First sale/exhaustion doctrine, RPM and european antitrust law

Ariel Katz  explains here that the doctrine of exhaustion of intellectual property rights is pro-competitive. It does it by destabilizing cartels that are enforced through vertical restrictions. As contracts do not bind third parties, the manufacturer (copyright holder) can not take any action against subsequent acquirers of his product. He can only set limits to the first purchaser. If we were to get away with the first sale doctrine and allow the intellectual property right holder to enforce his right against subsequent acquirers, cartels (or tacit collusion) among manufacturers would be more easily enforced. On the contrary, RPM clauses allows the manufacturers to control the behaviour of their distributors. Any third party who can purchase copies of the product will not be bound by those agreements and therefore, the cartel enforcement is weakened. It is a question of remedies available to the right holder: a contractual party has only enforcement claims against its counterparty in the contract. A property right holder has a claim enforceable erga omnes.

But this same argument explains why it is wrong to consider as illegal vertical agreements which contain RPM clauses or clauses giving the dealer an absolute territorial protection as it is the case in Europe. Precisely because regional exhaustion in Europe applies (ie, the owner of a trademark may not prohibit the resale in Spain of a product put into circulation by him or with his authorization in Denmark), it is not necessary to prohibit agreements between manufacturers and distributors that seek to limit parallel trade.

Those who think otherwise - the European courts and the Commission - incur in the fallacy of composition: if the doctrine of exhaustion is good for the integration of markets and banning RPM clauses also helps to avoid geographically segmented markets, why not to apply both rules instead of the first one only ? And the answer is, as always, that there is no such a thing as a free lunch. By prohibiting contractual agreements, efficiencies created by these agreements are lost and almost everyone agrees that RPM clauses and absolute territorial protection clauses can generate significant efficiencies that end up moving to the consumer as lower prices if there is competition among manufacturers. If the doctrine of exhaustion renders ineffective the most damaging restrictions on parallel imports - the ones created through a cartel – and does it in a presumably efficient way (“The first sale doctrine is one of those internal IP rules that mitigate the social cost resulting from the IP exclusivity”) we are leaving euro bills on the sidewalk by forbidding contract clauses that generate efficiency gains. And what's worse, we are restricting freedom without justification

Por qué leo The Economist

The Economist is still probably the most influential periodical in the world. If you read its U.S. coverage, you’ll quickly discover that the analysis is not nearly so sharp and insightful as the omniscient tone would imply, and that the coverage has numerous blind spots and biases. Knowing how flawed the U.S. coverage is makes me question The Economist’s accuracy on topics for which I don’t know enough to judge the coverage. So in a sense, the less you know about something, the more useful The Economist is. For example, the latest issue had an article explaining that Poland is going full speed ahead with natural gas development via fracking. Because I previously had never thought about Polish natural gas, I learned a lot by reading the article. Overall, The Economist is still a strong source for weekly world news, as long as you don’t take its editorial judgements too seriously.

David Kopel en The Vokloh Conspiracy

Los precios que están bajando (II)

La responsabilidad limitada según Eucken

“Las limitaciones de responsabilidad, por ejemplo, en Derecho de sociedades o en Derecho de la Competencia solo son aceptables para proteger a los que aportan el capital cuando no se encargan y hacen responsables de la gestión de la empresa, es decir, para el pequeño accionista o el socio comanditario”

Walter Eucken (1952/90) Grundsätze der Wirtschaftspolitik, 6. durchgesehene Auf¬lage, Tübingen, XVI. Kapitel: Die Politik der Wettbewerbsordnung – Die konstituierenden Prinzipien, S. 254–291.

Por qué – de verdad – España no es Grecia

Lo de Grecia y lo de España: nada que ver. Los griegos – el Estado griego mediante – se han repartido miles de millones de euros pedidos prestados en pagarse sueldos y pensiones. Los españoles – el Estado español – no ha pedido prestado (la deuda pública era casi inexistente en 2005, el 40 % del PIB) y, sobre todo, no ha pedido dinero a los habitantes de otras zonas de Europa para repartirlo a troche y moche a los habitantes de la península ibérica. Los españoles (o sea, los europeos que vivían en la península ibérica) podían recibir créditos al 1 % porque los bancos españoles (o sea, los bancos europeos con oficinas en la península ibérica) recibían montones de dinero casi gratis porque el banco central europeo consideró, para proteger el crecimiento en Alemania, que tipos de interés muy bajos eran lo mejor. Y con ese dinero, los habitantes de la península ibérica compraban productos caros a los habitantes de la gran llanura europea, sobre todo, a los habitantes de las riberas del Rhin. Una vez que ha explotado la burbuja, los europeos que viven en la península ibérica y los bancos que tienen oficinas en la península ibérica se las ven y se las desean para devolver lo prestado. El Estado español – los contribuyentes que viven en la península ibérica – deben prometer que no pagarán las deudas de los que viven en la península ibérica. Que solo pagarán los sueldos y las pensiones que venían pagando (por eso hay que reducir el sector público que se ha hinchado en los últimos diez años). Y los bancos que tienen oficinas en la península ibérica tienen que hablar con los que les prestaron el dinero y acordar cómo se lo van a devolver. Pero que no nos metan a todos en su mal negocio. Y si, para eso, hay que entregar las cajas a inversores que aprovechan las buenas oportunidades, que lo hagan. Lean este magnífico análisis de lo que ha pasado en Grecia y verán que no tenemos nada que ver

Más diversidad, menos delitos (Financial Times)

El descenso en los niveles de delincuencia en las ciudades, a pesar de la crisis, puede deberse a

the growing racial, ethnic and demographic diversity of our cities and metro areas. Our analysis found the Hispanic share of the population is negatively associated with urban crime. Crime also fell alongside the percentage of the population that is non-white, and the percentage that is gay. But of all the variables, the one most consistently negatively associated with crime is a place’s percentage of foreign-born residents.