To facilitate businesses’ collaboration in this climate of swiftly evolving business conditions, the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (“CCCS“) has issued a public consultation on a proposed Business Collaboration Guidance Note (“Guidance Note“) to help businesses and trade associations understand the competition issues that may arise from their collaboration and provide ways to avoid or alleviate these issues. The Guidance Note focusses on six common types of business collaborations, namely information sharing, joint production, joint commercialisation, joint purchasing, joint research and development and standardisation.
In this Update, we cover salient features of the proposed Guidance Note, such as its applicability, key competition concerns of the common types of collaborations, how CCCS generally assesses compliance of such collaborations with section 34 of the Competition Act, and how to minimise competition concerns. We will also briefly touch on how trade associations may support collaborations amongst their members without falling foul of the law.
The consultation closes on 27 August 2021.
For more information, click here to read the full Legal Update.
