Agenda Archive

Changing tides: how consumers and merchants are redefining the payment experience

August 2020

Retail payments bring together retailers and consumers, and the two-sided nature of this market means that the design of payment methods must reflect the needs of both sides. Today, the competitive landscape for retail payments in Europe is rapidly transforming due to changing consumer preferences, technological progress, regulatory intervention and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. How are the expectations of consumers and merchants redefining the payment experience?

Spotlight on tax and state aid: the General Court’s Apple judgment

August 2020

In July 2020, the EU General Court annulled the European Commission’s decision that Ireland had granted illegal state aid of at least €13bn to Apple through two tax rulings. The General Court’s judgment in the Apple case was one of the most keenly awaited judgments in the area of state aid. What are the key economic issues raised by the General Court in this case? More generally, how can multinational companies and national tax authorities mitigate state aid risks?

Abuse, She Wrote

August 2020

Jessica Fletcher and her fellow protagonists in whodunnit stories, such as Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot, knew the formula: find the motive of the suspect, and you have solved half the crime. Dr Gunnar Niels, Partner at Oxera, discusses how competition authorities sometimes behave as if they were in a detective novel by Agatha Christie or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, focusing on the intent of the dominant company.