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Danny Leung, Stephanie Tsui, Sep 30, 2015
The Hong Kong Competition Ordinance is scheduled to come into force on December 14, 2015, providing the first comprehensive competition regime in Hong Kong. Prior to its enactment, competition provisions in Hong Kong only covered the broadcasting and telecommunications sectors and were overseen by the Communications Authority.
Since the Ordinance was passed into law in 2012, the Government and the newly established Hong Kong Competition Commission have gazetted the Competition Tribunal Rules and other subsidiary legislation relating to the procedure and operation of the Competition Tribunal. The HKCC and Communications Authority have jointly published six guidelines on their general approach of the Ordinance. At the time of writing, it is expected that additional guidance will be published soon on leniency policies, enforcement priorities, and the Memorandum of Understanding between the HKCC and the Communications Authority on how the two authorities will coordinate their concurrent enforcement powers.
In this article, we examine the different stages of enforcement for the new law; we will consider the investigation process, formal enforcement proceedings, and finally private damages actions. We will not cover the substantive provisions of the law in detail.
