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The proposed Digital Markets Act has elicited various reactions. "Friends of an effective Digital Markets Act" ask for stricter supervision of Bigtech. The European Competition Network (ECN) suggests that national competition authorities should play a role.

Not too long ago, several listed companies bought the music rights of world famous stars such as Bob Dylan and Taylor Swift. The payoff of investing in music comes mainly from the revenue from streams. And the benefits do not seem to be that bad: for instance, since Sony bought Michael Jackson's music portfolio in 2016, its stock price has quadrupled (1).

Anyone who thinks that M&A transactions below the European and national merger control  thresholds fall outside the control of the competition authority could be in for an unpleasant surprise. Upon referral by the European Member States, even these transactions might be investigated by the European Commission. This particularly concerns transactions involving small, innovative companies with high competitive potential.

In a recent case (the “Bowie Recycling Case”) the Dutch Supreme Court has finally confirmed that it is possible to change the priority of an existing right of pledge versus one or more other rights of pledge over the same assets in a similar way as already expressly provided for in relation to rights of mortgage under the Dutch Civil Code. Prior to this, there was no clear legal basis to rearrange the priority of rights of pledge, leading parties to resort to contractual intercreditor arrangements or recreation of pledges in the intended order of priority to achieve the same result to, for example, allow for a secured mezzanine loan or to give priority security to a lender providing additional financing in a restructuring situation. Furthermore, the Dutch Supreme Court has provided new and useful guidance with respect to the rules that apply to collection of pledged receivables and distribution of proceeds in cases where a claim secured by a pledge over rights and receivables is itself pledged by the original creditor/pledgee to another creditor, which could for example be done in the context of a loan-on-loan transaction.