Thursday 18 July 2013

IBF wins anti-competitive case on net billings issue

Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) won on anti-competitive case filed by the Delhi-based Advertising Agencies Guild (AAG) with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) alleging that IBF and its members acted as a cartel and wanted to shift from gross billing basis to net amount billing to ad agencies and were forcing the ad agencies to accept the same.
AAG - which represents small and medium advertising agencies - had appealed to the CCI that the IBF was in violation of sections 3 (1) and section 3 (3) of the competition act as its members had unilaterally decided to switch to net billings, and then had collectively refused to accept TV commercials on 1 and 2 May 2013 to force the advertising world to accept what they believed should be the new practice. The AAG said that both these collective actions by the IBF and its members were anti-competitive.

The CCI, however, totally dismissed the case on 1 July saying that prima facie it did not merit any further investigation.
It ruled: "At this juncture, it may be stated that section 3(3) of the Act is applicable when there is a horizontal agreement between players operating at the same level in a particular market. Such agreement may be in the form of price fixation, market sharing, collusive bidding etc. which will have an appreciable adverse effect on competition within the market in which they are operating. Collective action of the members of a trade association per se does not fall in the categories of agreements contravening section 3(3) of the Act. Simply, collective action taken at the level of the trade association to change the billing system prima facie does not amount to any contravention under the Act."

Source:
http://cablequest.org/news/legal-news/item/2834-ibf-wins-anti-competitive-case-on-net-billings-issue.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/legal-news/item/2834-ibf-wins-anti-competitive-case-on-net-billings-issue.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

Aadhaar leak: EPFO discontinues services provided through Common Service Centre

Following fear of Aadhaar data leak, the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) on May 2 said it has discontinued services provided t...