The review will scrutinize the deal’s impact on “the development of competition between exchanges and associated products or services,” the ACCC said in an announcement on its website.
The review will scrutinize the deal’s impact on “the development of competition between exchanges and associated products or services,” the ACCC said in an announcement on its website.
Potential impacts on entry to the Australian marketplace by Chi-X Australia and other operators will also be evaluated as part of the review, the announcement said.
The controversial deal announced in October sparked an outcry from Australian politicians concerned about a foreign takeover of a crucial component of the nation’s financial system.
The controversial deal announced in October sparked an outcry from Australian politicians concerned about a foreign takeover of a crucial component of the nation’s financial system.
Consumer Watchdog April 21 asked the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a broad antitrust action against Google and suggested the government agency could break up Google into several companies as a remedy to alleged monopolistic practices. The problem with the monopoly argument is that Google doesn’t force what is roughly 65 percent of the U.S. search market to use its search service. If a court could not see fit to break up Microsoft a decade ago, how can a court break up Google, which has not been formally accused of anticompetitive practices?
– News Analysis: In its most aggressive position against
Google yet, Consumer Watchdog April 21 asked the U.S. Department of Justice to sue the search engine and suggested the
government agency could break up Google into several companies.
Consumer Watchdog advocate John M. Simpson argued that the
…
Britain’s financial regulator belatedly turns tough
BRITAIN’S Financial Services Authority (FSA) has a death sentence hanging over it. The Conservatives have pledged that if they win the general election that is now less than three months away, they will abolish the FSA, handing the job of supervising financial institutions to the Bank of England and creating a new consumer-protection agency to take on the FSA’s task of protecting and advising the public. The authority’s chief executive, Hector Sants, has said he will resign soon after the election. But that does not mean the financial watchdog is going quietly. In the past year or so it has been both biting more ferociously and barking more loudly.
On Tuesday March 23rd, in what the FSA said was its biggest investigation yet into insider trading, police raided 16 premises and arrested six people—two of whom were described as “senior professionals” in the City of London. This follows a series of high-profile penalties handed down by the authority, such as on March 16th when a former interest-rate trader at Merrill Lynch was banned from London’s financial markets for at least five years for covering up his losses. Five days earlier a former stockbroker at Cazenove was jailed over an insider-dealing case brought by the FSA. …
Google and Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders(RSF) have honored a collective of Iranian women bloggers. It came for their reporting on women’s issues and last year’s postelection unrest, RFE/RL reports.
Businesses think Europe’s trustbusters should be kept on a tighter leash
IT WAS probably with some relief that Joaquin Almunia took up his post as the European Union’s competition commissioner earlier this month. One of his main tasks in his previous job, as commissioner for monetary affairs, was to police the public finances of the countries that use the euro. But he lacked any means to sanction the fiscally lax, such as Greece. That left a mess that his successor is now struggling to clean up.
In his new job Mr Almunia may have the opposite problem: too much power. He has the authority to block mergers, to force companies to sell assets and to fine heavily firms judged to have thwarted fair competition. There is only limited redress for businesses that feel they have been punished unfairly. All this has prompted a growing fuss about how his agency treats companies it accuses of taking part in cartels or of trying to maintain monopolies by freezing out smaller rivals. The commission, competition lawyers complain, acts as prosecutor, judge and jury. …
Piracy on the high seas rose to its  highest level in six years in 2009, with attacks becoming more frequent and more violent across the globe, a maritime watchdog said Thursday. There were 406 reported incidents of piracy and high-seas armed robbery in 2009, up from 293 the previous year,
The UN nuclear watchdog’s governing body has passed a resolution condemning Iran for developing a uranium enrichment site in secret. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also demanded that Iran freeze the project immediately.
TV company’s £300,000 contract ‘broke EU rules’
Trevor Phillips’s position as chair of Britain’s equality watchdog is under intense pressure in the wake of revelations that it unlawfully awarded a £300,000 contract to a company run by one of his close professional friends.
The six-figure sum swallowed up the entire publicity budget for the launch of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
The commission was also shaken last week by the resignation of Ben Summerskill, of Stonewall, a gay rights group. On Friday, he urged that Phillips should quit his post. Summerskill’s departure and remarks will intensify scrutiny of the watchdog’s finances. The Observer has learnt that a confidential investigation into the award of the contract was ordered by Nicola Brewer, the commission’s former chief executive, but has not been made public.
The investigation examined the award of a contract to Juniper TV, a company headed by Dr Samir Shah, who has known Phillips since they worked at LWT in the 1980s. In 2007, as the commission was being set up, Juniper was awarded a contract to produce My Story, a 30-minute video in which the public and celebrities talked about “difference”.
According to the tendering document, the project was the “first EHRC product reflecting and publicising the new organisational branding”, but it ran into financial trouble. Concerned about spiralling costs, the commission attempted to terminate the contract. “There was an issue about halfway through the production,” Shah said. “They sought to bring the project to a close and we said we would expect them to pay us the cost of completing it.”
Emails obtained under the Freedom of Information act reveal the commission then demanded Juniper “shave” the costs of the production. But despite this, the EHRC still ended up paying Juniper £307,802, exceeding the £300,000 publicity budget for the commission’s launch.
“An internal audit report did subsequently raise concerns over budget and procurement processes in the transition team around this project,” a commission spokesman said. “The report concluded that EU procurement rules had not been followed, concerning whether or not the tender for the project should have been advertised across Europe.”
The revelation comes at the end of a turbulent week for the watchdog after Summerskill stood down, taking the total number of commissioners who have left to six. It also emerged that Alun Davies, the head of its disability committee, is leaving, as is its director of stakeholder relations, Bradley Brady. There is speculation that Sally Greengross, another commissioner, will leave soon.
The exodus is seen as a result of growing disquiet over Phillips’s role. As chairman, he works a three-and-a-half-day week and is paid £110,000 a year. There was speculation the government would not renew his contract this summer. The decision by the equality minister, Harriet Harman, to reappoint him triggered the recent departures.
In his resignation letter, Summerskill expressed concerns over the watchdog’s finances, stating: “As chair of the commission’s audit and risk committee, I would feel entirely unable to offer future reassurance … that the commission was being led and the commission’s affairs conducted with appropriate probity.”
Four major banks have repurchased warrants from the Treasury Department since a congressional watchdog reported that the backroom deals where the prices were negotiated were ripping off the taxpayer.
In three of the subsequent four transacti…
I have previously pointed out that “independent experts say that total government spending [for the bailouts] could rise to $20 trillion dollars.”Now, the government’s own watchdog over the various bailout efforts – the special inspector general – sa…
I have previously pointed out that “independent experts say that total government spending [for the bailouts] could rise to $20 trillion dollars.”Now, the government’s own watchdog over the various bailout efforts – the special inspector general – sa…
The European Commission, the European Union’s antitrust watchdog, sets a September date for parties to comment on search engine giant Google’s deal with book publishers.
– BRUSSELS (Reuters) The European Commission is to hold a hearing on
September 7 for interested parties to comment on Google’s deal with
publishers to make millions of books available online and its impact on
EU writers’ rights.
quot;Participants were invited to it three weeks ago, quot; Commissi…
Facebook is not doing enough to protect the personal information it gets from subscribers and it gives users confusing and incomplete information about privacy matters, a Canadian privacy official claimed in a report released this week.
– OTTAWA (Reuters) – The popular social networking site Facebook is
not doing enough to protect the personal information it gets from
subscribers, and it gives users confusing and incomplete information
about privacy matters, Canada’s privacy commissioner said on Thursday.
quot;It’s clear that pr…
