Nieuwe counsels bij contrast
15/03/2021

Advocatenkantoor contrast promoveert Karolien Francken en Sarah Jaques tot counsel. Beide advocaten zijn hun carrière gestart bij het kantoor en de promoties zijn een beloning voor hun jarenlange toegewijde inzet.

4th Belgian M&A Survey by contrast
30/03/2017

On 28 March contrast organized a closed event where the results of the fourth M&A Survey were presented to all participants. The fourth edition of the M&A Survey was based on 300 transactions with a total deal value of 14.7 billion euros and closed in the period 2012-2016.

contrast appoints its fourth musketeer, Herlinde Burez.
17/02/2017

contrast is pleased to announce that Herlinde Burez will strengthen its partnership. Herlinde has experience across the entire practice of contrast and in particular in business law, distribution law and competition law matters.

New book on agreements between competitors : a competition-law minefield
16/04/2015

This month, a book titled "Horizontal Agreements and Cartels in EU Competition Law" and focusing entirely on agreements and arrangements between competitors is being published by the prestigious Oxford University Press. These kinds of practices are viewed with suspicion in competition law. For the most serious violations, the so-called cartels, the fines can quickly rise into the tens and even hundreds of millions. Many Belgian companies too have already run afoul of the competition-law rules and been obliged to pay heavy fines.

The book is edited by Frank Wijckmans and Filip Tuytschaever, both of them partners in the specialised law firm contrast. 

Gun jumping? Don´t take off from the starting-blocks too quickly during an acquisition!
27/01/2022

Some transactions, such as acquisitions between companies that exceed certain turnover thresholds, are subject to the prior approval of the competition authorities. This is the notification obligation. Such a transaction may not be implemented until it is formally approved. This is the so-called standstill obligation. Concretely, the companies involved must continue to act like independent entities until the competition authority grants its approval. In the case of an acquisition, the buyer may not exercise any control over the target company until that moment. An infringement of the standstill obligation is called gun jumping.

Ready for a (home) search by the competition authority?
07/10/2021

Dawn raids are unannounced searches via which a competition authority verifies whether its suspicions that competition law has been violated are indeed justified. The searches are traditionally done in the offices of the company or professional association under investigation. Not only business premises but also company cars can be searched. However, a competition authority also has the power to conduct searches in private homes (and private cars) of e.g. the managers, directors or other personnel members of the company or association. For this they must have a reasonable suspicion that documents which are relevant for the investigation are located in those places. Moreover, they require a prior court authorisation for doing such searches.

Ticking the box for your distribution agreements
02/09/2021

 In the future, the European Commission apparently would like to subject dual distribution to additional conditions for being able to benefit from the Vertical Block Exemption Regulation (‘VBER’).

Forum selection and choice of law clauses: they’re not just boilerplates...
01/07/2021

As a Belgian distributor, you enter into a new cooperation with an Italian supplier for the distribution of racing bicycles in Belgium. The supplier sends you a draft contract in which you read that Italian law will apply to the contract and that the courts of Milan will have jurisdiction if ever a dispute arises between the parties. That strikes you as absurd, given that the products are delivered in Belgium and are sold primarily to Belgian cycling enthusiasts. However, you do not want to be needlessly confrontational with your supplier, so you ask your legal department for advice.