Strong competition in industry allows organizations to compete on measures such as the quality and innovativeness of their products, the skills and efforts of their employees, and the soundness of their business and pricing strategies. In a freely competitive market, each competing business will try to gain consumers by cutting its prices, increasing the quality of its product or services, and finding more efficient means of production.

When competitors agree to fix prices, rig bids, or allocate customers, consumers lose the benefits of competition. Such anti-competitive restraints threaten the health of the marketplace and lessen choice and value to consumers. Whether inadvertent or intentional, violation of antitrust law can result in grave consequences for the organization as well as for the individual.

Global Compliance's online course, Antitrust and Anti-Competitive Practices, teaches users to identify situations that could raise antitrust concerns and provides guidance on how to interact with competitors and other business-related associations.

Any employee involved in sales, marketing, business development, pricing, bidding, purchasing, or communications with competitors and suppliers.

The course explores anti-competitive practices such as:

1. Price-Fixing: Two or more sellers agree that they will increase prices a certain amount, or that they won't sell below a certain price
   
2. Bid-Rigging: Two or more firms agree not to bid against each other to supply products or services to government agencies, or they agree on the level of their individual bids
   
3. Market Allocation: Two or more firms agree not to compete with each other by dividing sales territories or allocating customers

Users will learn practical skills for identifying questionable activities that could put the organization at risk, including:

• communications with competitors and subcontractors
• joint development projects
• activity in associations

The course also describes the consequences of violating antitrust provisions for the organization and for the individual.

The course includes several scenarios and interactive exercises designed to focus the learner's attention on difficult, "gray area" situations that they may encounter in real life.

The course can easily be customized to include an audio-visual message from an official in your organization and instruction on your organization's specific policies relating to antitrust and anti-competitive practices.

To view or print a flyer describing the content, features and benefits of Global Compliance's online course, Antitrust & Anti-Competitive Practices, click on the image below.(PDF)

To Learn More
To view a demo or learn more about this course, call Global Compliance at (800) 507-8491 or contact us.