Competition and Antitrust

Convenor: Professor Thomas Cheng

Professor Thomas Cheng has been twice awarded the Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award in the vertical restraints and antitrust, and intellectual property categories. His stature as a scholar has been recognised through appointments to the executive and advisory boards of a number of leading international competition law organisations such as the American Antitrust Institute and the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA). Professor Cheng has made critical contributions to the development of competition law in Hong Kong. He advised the government extensively during the drafting of the city’s first competition law. Professor Cheng was a member of the inaugural Competition Commission and played a pivotal role in staff recruitment and setting up the commission.

The Faculty has been at the forefront in the development of a competition law expertise in Hong Kong. The Faculty began to acquire competence in the area back in 2006, six years before the Competition Ordinance was passed in 2012. The Faculty hired its second academic staff member in the area in 2012, and more recently two more joined from leading universities in Europe. It now possesses the broadest competence and offers the most courses in competition law among the universities in Hong Kong. At the moment, it offers, among others, courses on U.S. antitrust law, EU competition law, merger review, competition economics, AI and competition, and sustainability and competition. In addition to the four full-time academic staff, Thomas Cheng, Kelvin Kwok, Julian Nowag, and Adrian Kuenzler, the Faculty regularly invites visitors from abroad to further enhance our competence.

Apart from offering the most comprehensive curriculum on competition law in Hong Kong, the Faculty, through the AIIFL, has been active in research in the field. Members of the AIIFL have been awarded, among others, two Public Policy Research (“PPR”) grants and four General Research Fund (“GRF”) grants in the area of competition law. Under the “Competition and Environmental Sustainability in Hong Kong’s Energy Market” PPR grant, the investigators examined how the introduction of competition in the electricity market in Hong Kong will affect its environmental performance and concluded that the impact could be adverse. There is thus a need for the government to adopt legislation to ensure the environmental performance of the electricity companies. Under the “Conglomerates and Competition Law Enforcement in Hong Kong” PPR grant, the investigator looks at how the adopted Competition Ordinance should address the competition problems caused by the domination of the local economy by conglomerates. Under the “Competition Law in Developing Countries” GRF grant, the investigator studies whether mainstream competition law principles need adaptations to take into account the specific circumstances of developing countries. Kelvin Kwok (as Principal Investigator) and Thomas Cheng (as Co-Investigator) have been awarded a GRF grant to embark on the project titled “Buyer Power under Competition Law: A Theoretical Examination and A Case Study of Hong Kong” in 2017 for three years. Most recently, Julian Nowag and Thomas Cheng have been awarded a GRF grant to study algorithms and competition.

Research Output

Professor Thomas Cheng has been awarded Research Output Prize 2020-21:
“Competition Law in Developing Countries”, Oxford University Press, 2020, 608pp

Upcoming Event

Combatting Collusion and Corruption in Public Procurement: A Challenge for Government’s Worldwide (25 November 2024)