In a high-impact legal twist, renowned financial institutions Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and UBS have agreed to jointly pay out a colossal sum of approximately $500 million, under a settlement aimed at ending a lawsuit brought by shareholders.

The legal complaint alleged that these companies had participated in an anticompetitive conspiracy, according to court documents filed in New York on Wednesday.

Although it is pending approval by a judge, the agreement not only contemplates the financial outlay, but also involves the active collaboration of these four entities with the investors who sued Bank of America, another actor involved in the litigation.

The central accusation raised by investors focuses on the alleged coordination of banks to undermine new entrants in the securities lending market. The agreement, summarized by the plaintiffs, maintains that these entities took advantage of their control over EquiLend to establish an alleged monopoly in the sector, causing harm to emerging “startups” that sought to position themselves in the industry.

As an essential part of this historic agreement, EquiLend has committed to implement a rigorous code of ethics against monopolistic practices. In addition, members of its board of directors will be required to participate in programs designed to prevent such conduct.

It is worth noting that a similar precedent was set in 2022, when the plaintiffs settled with Credit Suisse (now part of UBS), for the sum of $81 million.

With the presentation of this agreement today, the plaintiffs emphasize that the total compensation could amount to 580 million dollars, placing this case as one of the most transcendental litigation of the last decade in relation to monopolistic practices in the financial field.

K. Tovar

Source: Descifrado

(Reference image source: Unsplash+)

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La entrada Big US banks paid $500 million in conspiracy lawsuit apareció primero en Bitfinance.

Microsoft Communications Director Frank Shaw has accused Sony of giving information that is “nothing further from the truth” to European regulatory authorities in Brussels about Call of Duty parity if the Xbox maker buys Activision. Blizzard.

Microsoft reached an agreement at the beginning of 2022 with the video game developer Activision to carry out its purchase for around 60.3 billion dollars. Since then, Sony, the maker of Xbox’s main competitor platform, has spoken out against this acquisition, alleging that it could result in a monopoly for Microsoft in the video game sector.

Sony also stresses that this purchase could endanger the maintenance of the games published by Activision Blizzard on PlayStation. Games like Call of Duty, one of the most successful of this developer and of the video game industry.

However, Microsoft confirmed in December last year that it was offering Sony a contractual agreement to keep the Call of Duty franchise available on the Japanese manufacturer’s console for ten years. This agreement would be part of an attempt by Microsoft to avoid blocks from the competent regulatory bodies in several countries, which are currently investigating the purchase of the developer. Among them, the United States and the European Union.

Now, Shaw said, Sony has been informing authorities in Brussels that Microsoft “is not willing to offer them Call of Duty parity” if they acquire Activision Blizzard, to which he has responded that “nothing could be further from the truth.” and has been referred to the contract offered to Sony.

“We have made it clear that we have offered Sony a ten-year contract to give them parity in time, content, functions, quality, gameplay and any other aspect of the game,” Microsoft’s director of Communications said on Twitter.

Source: dpa

(Reference image source: Alexander Cifuentes, Unplash)

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The United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the technology giant Google for monopoly in the advertising sector, for which it asked the Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to force the company to spin off part of its advertising business.

The lawsuit is led by the Department of Justice, although the states of Virginia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennesse have joined the legal action.

“Competition in the ad-tech space is broken, for reasons that have not been accidental or unavoidable. An industry behemoth, Google, corrupted legitimate competition in the ad-tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of a wide range of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers and brokers to facilitate digital advertising“, the plaintiffs said.

The prosecutors of these States ensure that Google keeps “at least” 30% of the campaigns that advertisers advertise on the websites of publishers through its advertising technology.

This is the second lawsuit that the Justice Department has filed against Google. In 2020, the agency already began legal proceedings against the technology company, alleging that it had engaged in monopolistic practices to dominate the Internet search sector, as well as advertising in said searches.

K. Tovar

Source: El Pais

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La entrada USA sued Google for monopoly apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an antitrust complaint against Facebook, which had been initially dismissed last June, alleging that the multinational resorted to an illegal scheme to acquire successful competing companies or bury those that could threaten their dominance.

At the end of June, Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia Court determined that the allegations against the social network presented by the FTC were “insufficient”, so he dismissed his claim, noting that the federal agency had not alleged sufficient facts to plausibly establish that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for personal social networking services.

However, the judge gave the FTC 30 days to amend his claim and resubmit a lawsuit, a deadline that was later extended until August 19.

In the amendment to its claim, the FTC accuses the network that, lacking serious competitive threats, the company “has been able to perfect an advertising model based on surveillance and impose increasing burdens on its users.”

“Facebook lacked the business acumen and technical talent to survive the transition to mobile devices and unable to compete with new innovators, Facebook illegally bought or buried them when their popularity became an existential threat”, said Holly Vedova, Acting Director of the FTC Competition Office.

In this regard, the amendment to the complaint filed by the FTC notes that executives at Mark Zuckerberg’s company addressed this existential threat by purchasing mobile innovators, including rival Instagram in 2012 and the mobile messaging app WhatsApp in 2014, which had succeeded where Facebook had failed.

Source: dpa

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Google considered buying all or part of the Fortnite video game developer, Epic Games, for competing with its official Google Play application platform.

This is clear from court documents that were released now as part of an investigation in the Northern District Court of California (United States) against Google for alleged monopoly practices on its application platform, denounced by Epic Games.

To support its monopoly accusations, the video game developer said in the document that Google had come to “share the benefits of its monopoly with partners to secure agreements to limit competition.“

Epic Games denounced that some of these technology practices were directed against the US studio. “Google has developed a number of internal projects to address the ‘contagion’ it perceives from efforts by Epic and others to offer consumers and developers competitive alternatives.”

Ultimately, the creator of Fortnite goes so far as to claim that the tech giant “considered buying part or all of Epic to remedy the threat” to his position.

K. Tovar

Source: Xataka

La entrada Google considered buying Epic Games apareció primero en Bitfinance.

A coalition of 37 attorneys general in the United States filed a lawsuit against Google in California for alleged monopolistic conduct in relation to its application Google Play Store.

The lawsuit is led by the Utah attorney general. It has been joined by the attorneys general from 35 other states in the country, in addition to Washington DC.

“Google’s monopoly is a threat to the market. Google Play is not fair. Google must be prosecuted for harming small businesses and consumers. It must stop using its monopoly power and hyper-dominant market position to capture billions of dollars of SMEs, competitors and consumers above what they should pay,” said Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes.

This new lawsuit accuses Google of having used its dominant position to unfairly restrict competition with the Google Play Store. The complaint argues that the technology company originally sold Android as an “open” system, causing manufacturers to use it and not compete with Google Play at that time. According to the lawsuit, once the company had a “critical mass” of users, it began shutting down the Android ecosystem.

Specifically, the attorneys general accuse the giant of imposing technical barriers that prevent users from installing applications outside the Play Store. They also ensure that the company forces device manufacturers to sign agreements to prevent them from developing versions of Android that deviate from the version certified by Google.

K. Tovar

Source: Xataka Android

La entrada Google was sued for alleged monopoly apareció primero en Bitfinance.

Google will implement changes to its global advertising system to prevent abuse of market dominance. The move is part of an unprecedented agreement by the organization with the French Antitrust Authority. The settlement also includes a fine of 220 million euros for monopolistic practices in the industry.

Isabelle de Silva, France’s antitrust chief, said: “The decision to sanction Google is of particular importance because it is the first in the world to focus on the complex algorithmic auction processes on which the online advertising business is based.”

The sanction of the giant is a historical fact that could become a before and after for publishers of web pages and other applications for mobile devices, due to the benefits they obtain from online advertising.

Dominant position

The development of the investigation demonstrated the preferential treatment that the company gave to its ad technologies, placing its competitors at a disadvantage, and which allowed it to increase its dominance and position in the world market.

Google privileged its DFP advertising server and the AdX platform, responsible for organizing the auction processes. This platform supplied the bidding price offered by the competition, and Google increased the bidding price, reducing the attractiveness of third-party advertising services.

M. Rodríguez

Fuente: hipertextual.com

La entrada Google will change its public practices around the world apareció primero en Bitfinance.

This week takes place the trial that faces Apple and the creator of Fortnite, Epic Games, who denounces that the former exercises monopoly practices on its official application platform, the App Store. Both companies have presented their arguments for and against the allegations.

This legal battle began after the introduction of Epic Games of an alternative payment system to the App Store, in which Apple did not obtain commissions. This caused Apple to delete all its apps from its platform, including the Fortnite video game for iOS.

Apple, which will be represented at this week’s trial by senior officials including its CEO Tim Cook, its chief marketing officer, Phil Schiller, and its senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, argues that iOS developers have a “tremendous access” to Apple’s intellectual property, as the previously submitted document argues.

This access is especially focused on Apple’s tools for application developers, or APIs, among which are StoreKit, ResearchKit, GameplayKit, SpriteteKit, CareKit, ARKit, HomeKit, CoreML and the Swift programming language, among others.

The arguments

The company also defended that its practices in the App Store protect the safety of users, that only 1.72 % of existing ‘malware’ affects iOS, and that its design blocks third-party payments for the same reason.

As for Fortnite, the American company assures that the ‘freemium’ model (free with payments for internal content) of the store has allowed the success of the Epic Games video game, and that the study tried to lower the commissions of the App Store but did not from the Microsoft Store for PC and Xbox.

Apple maintains that Epic Games cannot prove any conduct against market competition, given that developer revenue grew to nearly $ 3 billion in 2019 and platform commissions have dropped, to the 15 % in apps in their first million dollars of collection, and then it goes to 30 %.

K. Tovar

Source: BBC

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