CHRIS PIKE
Head of Digital Markets
Managing Director
Digital markets pose fundamental challenges for the private enforcement of antitrust, regulatory and consumer protection rules. These markets often feature platform-based business models, multi-sided markets, direct and indirect network effects, economies of scale and intricate eco-systems. Such features render competition issues more complex and create scope for exclusionary and exploitative practices.
While digital technologies can sometimes helpfully disrupt concentrated uncompetitive markets, they can also create new opportunities to collude, to exploit and to discriminate.
As the impact of the digital sector extends beyond information goods and services into other areas of the economy, civil society groups, firms across the economy, and policymakers are increasingly being forced into action to defend the rights of consumers and firms to participate in fair, open and competitive markets.
Fideres is one of the leading economic consultancies working to address misconduct in digital markets through research and litigation.
Through our investigative work, we identify evidence of violations of competition law, regulatory rules and consumer protection laws across the jurisdictions in which we operate.
We assist law firms and regulators throughout the life of the litigation, from filing to settlement.
For any Digital Markets related enquiries please contact Chris Pike at chris.pike@fideres.com
Self-preferencing
Exclusive and quasi-exclusive dealing
Loyalty discounts
Tying and Bundling
Margin squeeze
Refusal to deal
Forced free-riding & content scraping
Privacy policy tying
Platform envelopment
Drip-pricing and other behavioural manipulation
Excessive prices or data collection
Algorithmic discrimination and personalised pricing
Coordinated pricing & price guarantees
Online sales bans & minimum internet advertised prices
Hub and spoke cartels
Algorithmic collusion
Impact on prices of Most Favoured Nation (MFN) / Price Parity clauses
Market definition
Quantification of network effects
Rule of reason tests
Equally efficient competitor test, vertical arithmetic test
Expert reports
Expert witness testimony
Merits reports
Plan of allocation and settlement distribution
Damages analysis
Data analysis
Fideres has a wealth of experience in analysing competition within digital markets and emerging technologies such as blockchain. From defining markets for multi-sided platforms, to exploring anti-competitive conduct by large firms that benefit from strong network effects and large economies of scale and scope and who set zero prices and extract data. This experience is helping us to investigate and develop cases, and to provide expert testimony to courts and expert advice to clients working on complaints against many of the biggest monopolists in the sector. Sample cases include:
Cherry v. RealPage Inc., 2:22-cv-01618
Floyd v. Amazon.com Inc., 2:22-cv-01599
Affinity Credit Union v. Apple Inc., 4:22-cv-04174
Brown et al v. Amazon.com Inc., 2:22-cv-00965
Dr Liza Lovdahl Gormsen v. Meta Platforms, Inc. and Others, 1433/7/7/22
Amazon.com, Inc. eBook Antitrust Litigation, 1:21-cv-00351
Bookends & Beginnings LLC v. Amazon.com Inc., 1:21-cv-02584
Cameron v. Apple Inc., 4:19-cv-03074-YGR
West et al v. Amazon.com Inc., 2:21-cv-00694
Robert Hammond v. Amazon.com, Inc. & Others, 1595/7/7/23
Julie Hunter v. Amazon.com, Inc. & Others, 1568/7/7/22
Fideres has been at the forefront of investigations into cryptocurrency price manipulation and alleged misconduct by crypto exchanges. We have been advising our clients on a number of court and arbitration disputes. We collaborate with academics and our affiliate academic experts in this fast developing area of finance. Sample cases include:
Tether and Bitfinex Crypto Asset Litigation, 1:19-cv-09236
Arbitration Cryptocurrency Dispute
Fideres has been crucial to the filing and prosecution of a number of high-profile US commodities cases. Our successes in this area have included our novel microeconomic analysis of pricing and cost structures in the meatpacking and DRAM industries, and our use of complex auction pricing data from precious metal futures markets to show how these commodities were systematically overpriced by cartels. Sample cases include:
Pharmaceuticals and healthcare markets can seem as intricate and opaque as they are vital to consumers wellbeing, which makes them crucial sectors for antitrust scrutiny. Our analysis of drug pricing data helps to identify the markets in which pharmaceutical manufacturers collude to raise prices, and our expert testimony on the economics of drug industry helps plaintiffs recover damages. In healthcare markets, Fideres has led pioneering work on market definition and overcharge analysis in the increasingly-concentrated and expensive regional hospital markets of the United States. Sample cases include:
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