4th TILEC Energy Round Table

On Monday 11 December 2006, from 2.00 to 5.00 pm, Tilburg University organizes the fourth TILEC Energy Round Table. The round table meeting will discuss the highly important subject of consolidation in the electricity sector and the potential (abuse) of market power by dominant firms. As a consequence of the DG-competition sector inquiry, the new wave of consolidations of electricity firms and the protectionist attitude of some EU member states, this topic received a lot of media attention recently and is high on the agenda of policy makers (by invitation only). Read more.

Accountability mechanisms for regulatory decisions (Pierre Larouche and Maartje de Visser)

Pierre Larouche and Maartje de Visser have published a Discussion Paper reviewing the relationship between the Commission, the national regulatory authorities (NRAs) and the national courts in the light of the Commission's proposals for reform as set out in the 2006 Review. The focus is on two interrelated issues, namely the interaction between the NRAs and the Commission through the procedure of Article 7 of Directive 2002/21, and the accountability mechanisms for regulatory decisions, first and foremost review of NRA decisions by national courts, as set out in EC law in Article 4 of Directive 2002/21. The paper finds that the Commission proposals fail to address core issues such as the standard of assessment under Article 7, the accountability for decisions taken upstream of the NRA, and the scope and depth of judicial review and it suggests a number of factors that ought to be taken into consideration in tackling those issues.

Do Mergers and Acquisitions Affect Bondholders in Europe? (Luc Renneboog and Peter Szilagyi)

Do bondholder lose money in mergers and acquisitions (M&As)? Does creditor protection in bankruptcy codes or corporate governance regulation influence the position of bondholders in takeovers? These questions are answered by Luc Renneboog and Peter Szilagyi in their paper "How Do Mergers and Acquisitions Affect Bondholders in Europe? Evidence on the Impact and Spillover of Governance and Legal Standards". The authors show that bondholder wealth is strongly affected by cross-country variations in governance and legal standards. They find that governance considerations are in fact better predictors of Eurobond performance than either deal or firm characteristics.
Firstly, bond returns in both bidding and target firms are systematically higher in M&As that involve firms from the stakeholder-oriented governance regimes of continental Europe. Secondly, cross-border deals tend to induce lower bond returns. However, bondholders reap considerably higher gains if the deal exposes their firm to a jurisdiction with better creditor rights and claims enforcement. This suggests that cross-border M&As provide much greater scope for the functional spillover of creditor protection than has been previously assumed. Finally, bond performance is driven by both asset and financial risk changes, the merging firms' relative size, as well as a negative listing effect. The paper is published at SSRN and in the TILEC Discussion Paper Serie.

The Regulation of Gambling: European and National Perspectives (Alan Littler and Cyrille J.C.F. Fijnaut eds).

Following the colloquium entitled "The European and National Perspectives of the Regulation of Gambling", hosted by Tilburg University in 2005, The Regulation of Gambling: European and National Perspectives brings together a wide range of perspectives from the contemporary debate surrounding the regulation of this sector within the European Union. In bringing together contributions from academics, lawyers and operators with European and national perspectives, this book provides a valuable and timely contribution to what has become an increasingly important issue. As national policies come under closer scrutiny, it is interesting to see how this debate is divided in numerous ways, with varying approaches to gambling, national policies, European law, state monopolies and 'deregulation' all finding a place in this debate, and in this book.
On 23 November 2006 the second colloquium on gambling was organized at Tilburg University. The colloquium dealt with one of the most hotly debated topics within the field of gambling: "The Economic aspects of Gambling Regulation: EU and US perspectives". Read more.

Erik Brouwer appointed as professor of Competition and Innovation

As of 1 November 2006 Erik Brouwer is appointed as professor of Competition and Innovation. His chair is financed by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Professor Brouwer is especially interested in the interrelationships between innovation, competition and productivity. Innovation proves to be strongly affected by market forces, but there is little academic consensus about how the interrelationships work and what market type performs best in terms of innovation and productivity increases. In the coming years, professor Brouwer will work on these and other issues in the area of innovation and competition. He will be affiliated with the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration and with TILEC. He can be contacted at +31 (0)20 568 6133, e-mail: e.brouwer@uvt.nl. Read more in the press release.

Inaugural lecture Damien Geradin

On 3 November 2006, Damien Geradin held his inaugural lecture as Professor of Competition Law and Economics at Tilburg University. The title of the lecture was "Twenty years of Liberalization of Network Industries in Europe: Where Do We Go Now?". The lecture focused on the origins of the EC liberalization policy, chronicled successes and failures and identified the main issues which arose and which are still current now.