Tausi Insider

European Central Bank chief economist Philip Lane speaks during a Reuters Newsmaker event in New York, on Sept. 27, 2019. GARY HE/Reuters The European Central Bank will raise interest rates again in December and next year to fight inflation but those increases may well be smaller than the most recent ones, the bank’s chief economist Philip Lane said in an interview published on Monday. With the inflation rate in double digits, the ECB has raised interest rates by 200 basis points in just three months from record low levels, and is set to mop up some of the trillion euros pumped into the financial system in recent years. Lane suggested the next rate hike would be smaller than the record 75 basis-point-increases decided at the last two ECB meetings, but won’t be the last. “One platform for considering a very large hike, such as 75 basis points, is no longer there,” MNI quoted Lane as saying. “The more you’ve already done on a cumulative basis, that changes the pros and cons of any give...

The efficiencies defence is often erroneously cited as an impediment to robust enforcement of competition laws in Canada. Handout Michael Kilby is partner and head of the competition and foreign investment law group at Stikeman Elliott LLP. Lawson Hunter is senior counsel at Stikeman Elliott LLP and former head of the Competition Bureau. In recent months, public discussion of Canada’s competition laws has reached an all-time high. That is a good thing, given the importance of the subject to the Canadian economy. Much of the public discussion has, however, assumed facts not in evidence. And the more often and loudly certain things are said, the more obvious and indisputable they seem to become – often to the detriment of sound policy making. This is particularly true in the case of Canada’s “efficiencies defence,” under which a merger with anti-competitive effects may be allowed to proceed if those anti-competitive effects would be outweighed by economic efficiency gains. The efficien...