Competition in regulated markets, the insurance and banking sectors (year 2012)

Decisions regarding anticompetitive conducts in the regulated markets (energy, transport, electronic communications, media, postal services, and also banking and insurance) are few in the period concerned. However the number of cases scrutinized by Agcm is on average the same as in the previous years. Considering, in this brief introduction, the most important Agcm decisions, some general trends in comparison with the previous years can be highlighted. In the previous reviews great attention was paid to the commitment decisions since the occasional massive use of commitments strengthened the role of Agcm as an ex post regulator. The current review confirms that commitment decisions are dropping and reaching a physiological level (only 3 out of 10 cases of restrictive agreements and abuses of dominant position are commitment decisions). Agcm has also paid increasing attention to several pro-competitive elements: to the unbundling as a necessary step in fragmentation of vertically integrated industries, and to the increasing relevance given to information. Actually Agcm is dealing with abuses linked to particular treatments, especially refusals, of information by dominant firms. Considering mergers, Agcm has highlighted the different role of barriers to entry in order to obstruct the dominant or monopolistic position of post-merger companies.