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Harikumar Sukumar Pillay

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Hari is a principal in the Competition & Antitrust Practice Group at Baker McKenzie Wong & Leow. His practice covers competition law and regulation-related advisory work in Singapore and the Southeast Asia region. Hari was the Director of the Enforcement Division at the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS), where he supervised the CCCS’s Intelligence Unit and IT Forensics Taskforce, in addition to the supervision of case teams on various investigations, mergers and notifications. He was also responsible for managing leniency applications made to the CCCS, overseeing the secret complainant and reward schemes, planning and executing dawn raids, and recording investigative statements of persons under investigations. Hari led teams involved in defending appeals brought against the CCCS’s decisions before the Competition Appeals Board. Prior to joining the Baker McKenzie Wong & Leow, Hari completed stints in private practice and as a Justices' Law Clerk with the Singapore Legal Service. Hari is recognised as one of "Who's Who Legal: Competition Future Leaders - Partners" in the 2020 Who's Who Legal Competition law survey conducted in conjunction with Global Competition Review.

On 17 November 2022, the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore issued an infringement decision against four warehouse operators for infringing section 34 of the Competition Act 2004. The four warehouse operators had entered into a price-fixing arrangement by imposing a coordinated surcharge, known as the “FTZ Surcharge”, for warehouse services at Keppel Distripark. The FTZ surcharge is a surcharge imposed by warehouse operators on import cargo stored within the Free Trade Zone, and it was first introduced in order to manage rising costs. The CCCS imposed a total financial penalty of SGD 2,799,138 on the four businesses, namely CNL Logistics Solutions Pte. Ltd., Gilmon Transportation & Warehousing Pte. Ltd., Penanshin (PSA KD) Pte. Ltd. and Mac-Nels (KD) Terminal Pte. Ltd.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations Economic Ministers agreed to strengthen competition policy and enforcement cooperation at the 54th ASEAN Economic Ministers’ Meeting held in Siem Reap, Cambodia from 13 to 15 September 2022.
Businesses that operate in the Southeast Asia region are encouraged to undertake a timely review of their operations to ensure that they do not fall foul of competition laws.

KPPU, Indonesia’s competition authority, is taking an increasingly aggressive stance, as seen in its latest decision on partnerships between a large corporation and small and micro enterprises. In that case, a maximum fine of IDR 10 billion (approx. USD 670,000) was imposed on a large corporation that was viewed by KPPU as controlling the SMEs it partners with. This recent development could indicate the start of a more rigorous approach to enforcement by KPPU against SME partnerships.

Beyond resilience, the supply chains of the future are expected to be sustainable, embracing ESG principles. In the seventh webinar of our Supply Chain Series, our panel of experts will discuss the emerging and anticipated business issues, practical applications and legal considerations that companies need to consider, as they integrate corporate governance into the value chain, look at access to medicines and medical devices in a post-pandemic era, explore sustainable alternatives such as corporate power purchase agreements, and navigate the growing convergence of antitrust and ESG.

The Competition Guidelines outline how the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore’s analytical and procedural framework for administering the Competition Act 2004. Businesses should conduct a review of their existing business operations in Singapore to ensure that they are in line with these Competition Guidelines.

The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore will issue a Business Collaboration Guidance Note to provide businesses with more clarity on common horizontal, vertical and lateral collaborations between competitors. The draft Guidance Note also aims at encouraging collaborations that have pro-competitive effects. It covers six common types of business collaborations: information sharing, joint production, joint commercialization, joint purchasing, joint research and development, and standardization.

The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore’s (CCCS) Guidance Note on Collaborations between Competitors in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic (“COVID-19 Guidance Note”) expires on 31 July 2021. The CCCS intends to issue a Business Collaboration Guidance Note to ‘provide businesses with more clarity on common collaborations between competitors’. This is so that ‘businesses can collaborate in compliance with competition law with greater confidence’.