GLG News by Bankruptcy Experts: Lawyers (EU)

It should be no surprise that the subprime/ARS collapse has generated waves of class action lawsuits by shareholders.  And that they appear to have merit.  But that doesn't mean courts will give the plaintiffs the WMD of a class action status.  Ten years ago that would have been...

The DoJ amicus brief to the Supreme Court in a telecommunications case hints at a more relaxed view about the applicability of antitrust law to pricing decisions by regulated companies.  A key accusation in the bankcard interchange cases is that competing regulated banks on Visa...

The new DoJ antitrust guidelines significantly water down monopoly, per se liability, competition and tie-in standards that have propelled government enforcement and private lawsuits by retailers in recent years against Visa, MasterCard and their issuers.  Undoubtedly, the defendants will point...

Why does the supervisory board announces claim damages against 11 of its former executive board members? Will their be compensation which is high enough to cover the damages to the companies name? Of course not. Do they want to avoid future briberies. Of course not. Siemens is afraid to be punished...

The Lafferty study indicates that forced reductions of bankcard interchange fees in Australia have not significantly harmed issuer or network profits.  This is the exact opposite of what industry representatives had predicted.  If Lafferty is on target, interchange pricing...

Investors, including bankcard issuers, want the Visa IPO to be at least as successful as MasterCard's in '06. Visa's global legal problems, which are especially acute in the US and EU, could burden Visa far into the future. The US credit crunch could hold surprises for Visa, more so if Democrats...

To prevent the mortgage meltdown from spreading to payment cards, Congress will suspend aggressive reforms against bankcard lenders and other government pressure (from the feds and perhaps the DoJ) will help to minimize their risks in the interchange antitrust lawsuits.  Thus what Paulson...

Efforts by the EC and UK to stop cartel price fixing threaten bankcard interchange The threat will worsen if they allow private class actions to enforce antitrust standards.

* Major fault by the Romanian state * Fair competition is a fundamental right * the role f the European Commission

Visa's has proposed a global corporate restructure and IPO to help distance itself from antitrust risks.  Its recent filings with the SEC explaining its plan is an exceedingly complex, dreary and foreboding document.  It does not inspire confidence.