On June 18, 2014, on the first day of IV St. Petersburg International Legal Forum, EPAM held lunch “Antitrust regulation: tendencies, problems and solutions”. More than 80 representatives of large business came to discuss the most actual issues of antitrust regulation in the open dialog with the Federal Antimonopoly Service (the FAS) of the Russian Federation.
The key participants of the discussion were Igor Artemiev, Head of the FAS Russia, Andrey Tsarikovskiy, Stats-Secretary, Deputy Head of the FAS Russia, Sergey Puzyrevkiy, Head of Legal Department, and Maksim Ovchinnikov, Head of Department for Control over Industry and Defence Complex. Alongside, Alexander Kinev, Deputy Head of the FAS Russia, and Andrey Tenishev, Head Anti-Cartel Department.
Natalia Korosteleva, Partner at EPAM, Anna Numerova, Counsel and Head of Non-commercial partnership "Competition Support”, Senior Associates Evgeny Bolshakov and Maria Kobanenko took part in the discussion. In addition, Vitaliy Pruzhansky, expert-economist in antitrust regulation at RBB Economics, was invited to the lunch.
Dimitry Afanasiev, Chairman at EPAM, moderated the discussion. Dimitry opened the meeting with the commemoration of the 10’th anniversary of Igor Artemiev serving as the Head of the FAS Russia, he noted that a great job was done over this period. The FAS Russia finished the preparation for entry into the OECD, has begun to control compliance of 16 laws (control of protection of competition, state procurements, functions of natural monopolies, distribution on a competitive basis of limited natural resources, pricing in the state defense order, international investments and others), that shows the high level of confidence in the Heads of the FAS. The Service actively takes part in research and educational activities in the country and shares its experience in special educational programs.
Then in the relaxed lunch atmosphere guests discussed the most curret practical issues concerning antitrust regulation.
Also, Maksim Ovchinnikov made a presentation of newly developed rules of economic analysis of pricing for its accordance to the Law on Protection of Competition. These rules should form the unified approach to the analysis of the pricing policy of dominant economic entities in sphere of accordance to the Antitrust Law and increase the quality of the economic analysis of the pricing policy of dominant economic entities and expand the practice of the "method of comparable markets".
Participants of the discussion noted the importance of the FAS Russia role in improvement of the economic analysis and clarifying the complex issue of the definition of monopolistically high prices.
The regulator and the law society discussed the last initiatives and actual practical questions, designated a number of problems and some possible solutions.
The guests and participants of the discussion noted the importance of such meetings for the further improvement of the Antitrust Law and the necessity to continue the productive dialogue.
