Unprecedented competition case

Our law firm represented the client, a city infrastructure company, in a case against a major Scandinavian bank before the Supreme Court of Lithuania.

The case before the court was unprecedented in Lithuania and probably throughout Europe. The client sought the annulment of a credit contract due to an infringement of competition law rules and claimed that the defendant had acquired the possibility of controlling the client by means of mortgages of 100 percent shares and total financial dependence on the bank. The bank had not obtained the permission of the Competition Council for a transaction of this kind. As a consequence of this competition law infringement, the credit contract had to be annulled.

The case is significant as one of the first Lithuanian cases concerning private competition law enforcement.