Zvika Williger (Photo by Elad Gutman)
After Unilever, Shufersal, Rami Levy and others, the Competition Authority today (Wednesday) also summoned the controlling shareholders of Wilifood, Zvi Williger, for the price coordination affair that upset the economy that will be investigated tomorrow at the Competition Authority’s offices.
The Competition Authority in fact continues to investigate the price coordination and in fact fulfills the threat of Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman about a month ago to the food companies, retailers, importers and in short to everyone that if they raise prices – Lieberman and Barbi will have to act against them.
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As you may recall, the investigation became overt when Competition Authority investigators raided other offices such as the retail chain, Shufersal, and the food giant, Strauss. On November 9, 2021, the Competition Authority opened an investigation against Shufersal. PA investigators raided the company’s offices in Rishon Lezion and took documents. Company executives were questioned about an affair that was exposed in a savings plan by Maayan Perati in which the chain ran a discounted website for the ultra-Orthodox sector.
Strauss also updated that in its offices, representatives of the Competition Authority conducted a search and collection of materials in the company’s offices, on suspicion of violations of the Economic Competition Law, and that employees of the company, including senior officials, were questioned. Noam Weiman, CEO of Diplomat and its controlling shareholders, was also questioned.
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In early February, Competition Authority investigators raided Unilever’s offices and collected computers and equipment in order to investigate the price coordination affair, and in the first phase of the investigation, senior members of the Competition Authority were questioned.
The competition commissioner admits: “We did not crack the food market”
“The food market is something we have not yet fully cracked, I think new thinking needs to be done about it,” said attorney Michal Cohen, the competition supervisor, at the annual competition law conference organized by the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa.
Cohen’s remarks at the conference were surprising in their openness and the fact that Cohen is not afraid to point out the core of the problem in the field of competition in Israel, so if the PA identified the core of the problem, it is halfway to finding the solution.
The food sector is a very problematic area for maintaining an appropriate competitive framework and this complexity has made it difficult for generations of competition supervisors (even when antitrust executives were still called) to deal with it. On the one hand, the profit margins of all the players in the field seem reasonable, but quite surprisingly, the prices are moving in the same direction and in the same rates, and in general they are appallingly similar.
This is where the core of the problem comes into play. Is there any coordination mechanism that has been created over the years and we have not identified its generator so far? Is it possible to do something like this? Do we have sufficient and proportionate enough enforcement capacity? And so on.
In Israel (and in principle worldwide) academic research in the areas of competition (or rather increasing competition) is not developed in relation to other industries (such as securities law, monetary policy in times of crisis and so on) and therefore needs to keep pace. And how do you do that? Michal Cohen marked the first stage – exchanging information with engraved authorities around the world so that everyone would draw a line from experience in different countries and actually improve the quality of knowledge.
“Of course, the global village also comes to us, we will not accept this attempt to push the responsibility from foreign companies. In the end we will receive the material and if we have to enforce in this matter we will also enforce. I want to promote cooperation with foreign authorities. “All the material and in fact we have to chase the companies, I think that cooperation that will enable the transfer of agreements is good for the competition authorities, it shortens processes and increases the ability to enforce,” said Adv. Cohen.
As for the cost of living she said “when it comes to the cost of living, we need to think outside the box and if there is something we have not done yet and we need to do it then do it. On the other hand, we should not ‘share the mind’. We should be professional, be based “Understand what’s going on in the world and not do nonsense.”
Regarding the role of the Competition Authority, Adv. Cohen said that “we are a professional authority and will remain a professional authority. We will enforce only on a professional and evidentiary basis. For example, on issues of enforcement against monopolies, we will perform economic analysis before we do anything. ”
In her remarks, Cohen emphasized the importance of the Competition Authority, especially in the field of deterrence. “The fact that we see what is happening in the markets, certainly regarding criminal offenses but also regarding transactions and regarding restrictive arrangements … has a dramatic impact on the cost of living. We need to continue to enforce and we do not wait for these violations to fall on us. We understand that the immunity program is not what will put cartelists in line at the door as it happens in the United States.
“We have no fear of dealing with monopolies or large entities. If there is evidence, it does not matter who stands in front of us. We want our enforcement to challenge the edges. In enforcement against monopolies it will always be like this, because business owners always go the fine line between competition and “Anti-competitive behavior. It’s hard to spot these things so we also have to challenge ourselves,” she said.
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