Business Collaboration Guidance Note

Enabling businesses to work together with greater confidence

CCCS has issued a Business Collaboration Guidance Note ("Guidance Note") that aims to clarify CCCS's position on seven common types of business collaborations , and to provide supplementary guidance on how CCCS will generally assess whether such collaborations comply with section 34 of the Competition Act 2004.

In particular, the Guidance Note sets out factors and conditions, such as the nature and extent of the collaborations, and indicative market shares, under which  competition concerns are less likely to arise from the collaborations.

Seven common types of business collaborations covered are:

1. Information sharing – Exchange of both price and non-price information among businesses;
   
   
2. Joint production – Collaboration to jointly produce a product, share production capacity or subcontract production;
   
   
3. Joint commercialisation – Collaboration in the selling, tendering, distribution or promotion of a product;
   
   
4. Joint purchasing – Collaboration to jointly purchase from one or more suppliers;
   
   
5. Joint research & development (“R&D”) – Collaboration on R&D activities, such as joint investment;
   
   
6. Standards development – Setting of industry or technical standards; and
   
   
7. Standard terms and conditions in contracts – Usage of terms shared amongst competitors establishing conditions of sale and purchase of goods and services between them and their customers.
   

Download the Summary Brochure on the Guidance Note here.

For the Chinese version of the Summary Brochure, click here.

Download the full Guidance Note here.

Download CCCS's Response to the Public Consultation on the Guidance Note (Summary of Feedback) here.