CUHK LAW LLB graduate and PCLL student Joshua YEUNG has published a co-authored article “Pecuniary Penalties for Anti-Competitive Conduct: Absolutely Deterrent?” in the Hong Kong Law Journal, Vol. 50, Part 3 of 2020. 

The abstract of the article reads:

In Competition Commission v W Hing Construction Co Ltd, the Competition Tribunal delivered its first decision on pecuniary penalties for breaches of competition rules. It held that a structured approach to penalties assessment should be adopted, and that the primary purpose of penalties is deterrence. This article considers two models of deterrence: absolute deterrence and optimal deterrence. It argues that absolute deterrence is more suitable for Hong Kong’s nascent competition regime. However, the model designed by the Tribunal does not conform to the objective of absolute deterrence, since it may fail to strip the violators of all expected gains. This lack of commitment to absolute deterrence makes one question if deterrence is the primary purpose of penalties or whether some other basis informs the inquiry.