- Enforcement Trends and Structural Reforms in 2025: 2025 saw a marked tightening of competition and regulatory enforcement in Israel, alongside structural reforms aimed at increasing competition and market transparency.
- Harsher Punishments and Criminal Enforcement: Courts imposed actual prison sentences for cartel and bid-rigging offenses and reinforced strict enforcement against obstruction of investigations.
- Expanded Civil Exposure: A Supreme Court ruling allowed indirect victims to sue cartels, significantly broadening civil liability, while limiting class actions by institutional plaintiffs.
- Monopolies and Market Concentration: Regulators increased enforcement against abuses of market power, import restrictions, and anti-competitive conduct across concentrated sectors.
- Structural Reforms and Transparency: Regulatory initiatives focused on easing market entry, reforming import regimes, and enhancing merger review transparency.
- Looking Ahead to 2026: Companies are required to strengthen compliance, manage regulatory risk proactively, and account for heightened enforcement and personal exposure.
2025 Year-End Review: Competition and Antitrust
Summary
2025 was characterized by a clear trend of stepped-up law enforcement by the Israel Competition Authority and the Israeli court system. 2025 also saw an expansion of the types of offenses subject to criminal punishment, far harsher criminal sentencing, stricter administrative fine policies, and broader exposure to civil lawsuits.
Concurrently, regulatory authorities promoted a number of structural reforms this year, aimed at opening concentrated markets to international and local competition, lowering entry barriers, and increasing transparency vis-à-vis the business sector. Within this context, the Competition Authority focused its enforcement measures on various sectors it views as concentrated, including the food and financial sectors, and especially the automotive sector.
Harsher Punishments: Actual Prison Sentences and Stricter Enforcement Norms
Over the past year, enforcement authorities and the courts made it clear that there is no longer room for leniency in competition and white-collar offenses. This trend was reflected in several precedent-setting rulings and indictments.
Mandatory incarceration for cartel offenses:
The Israeli Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling that the minimum sentence for a restrictive trade arrangement between competitors (a cartel), as a rule, will be nine months of actual incarceration, with no option for conversion to community service. The court explicitly stated that it will attribute less significance to mitigating circumstances, including the lack of a prior criminal record or personal circumstances, due to the need for effective deterrence of economic crime.
Shortly thereafter, the Lod District Court imposed a 22-month prison sentence on Gabi Magnezi, who was convicted of bid-rigging offenses in construction and infrastructure projects, alongside offenses of obtaining property by deception and money laundering. This is the heaviest sentence imposed so far in a plea bargain, underscoring the trend of harsher penalties for cartel offenses and cases involving multiple offenses, as we wrote about previously.
Enforcement against obstructing investigative proceedings and destroying evidence:
Prosecutors filed an indictment against a senior corporate officer for deleting WhatsApp correspondence after the opening of an investigation (even though he was not charged with violating the Competition Law). The Competition Authority emphasized that destruction of evidence severely harms its enforcement capabilities. Therefore, such offenses, per se, may result in prison sentences of three to seven years, regardless of the outcome of the primary investigation.
Increased Exposure to Civil Lawsuits and Class Actions Pursuant to the Competition Law
“LIBOR manipulation” case: This case involved a motion to certify a class action filed against several foreign banks for colluding to manipulate the London interbank offer rate (the LIBOR) to skew the interest rate in their favor.
In this case, the Israeli Supreme Court recognized, for the first time, the right of an “indirectly injured party” to sue a cartel. It ruled that when a cartel coordinates prices against a particular party, customers of that directly injured party may also sue the cartel for their indirect damages. In this specific case, the court recognized the right of savers to sue banks that coordinated prices with an institutional entity (in which the savers held assets). By doing so, the court widened the scope of potential plaintiffs seeking cartel damages.
At the same time, the court limited the possibility of filing class actions on behalf of institutional entities that are capable of suing on their own. Therefore, the court denied the motion to certify a class action in this case.
Protecting Competition: Combatting Monopolies and Import Barriers
2025 saw extensive law enforcement activity in Israel and around the world to combat anti-competitive practices in local markets and against international corporations.
Heavy fines in the pharmaceutical market:
Two mega pharmaceutical corporations in Israel and abroad were fined more than ILS 44 million for imposing unreasonable terms on the supply of samples of an original drug, which delayed the entry of competition from a generic drug company. This sent a clear signal that the Director General of the Competition Authority will not hesitate to exercise enforcement powers against foreign corporations as well.
European law enforcement in the supply chain:
The European Commission fined a company for a cartel in the field of active pharmaceutical ingredients, clarifying that competition law applies also to intermediate components (“upstream in the supply chain”) and not only to end products. This ruling constitutes binding evidence in civil compensation claims in Europe.
Preventing harm to parallel imports:
In early 2025, an amendment to the Israeli Competition Law prohibiting direct importers from harming parallel imports was implemented for the first time. The Director General of the Competition Authority announced her intention to fine a scooter importer ILS 15.7 million and an officer of the company ILS 400,000 for unlawful collusion with a manufacturer abroad to stop supplies to a parallel importer in Israel. Since then, the Competition Authority has taken additional measures against disruptions of parallel imports, including imposing pecuniary sanctions totaling about ILS 10 million on the Roltime Group and about ILS 1.5 million on an officer of the company for reports that harmed competition in the import of Samsonite and Tissot products. It also imposed sanctions totaling about ILS 500,000 on Moshe Sides & Son Ltd. for stopping parallel imports of products.
Higher Intervention in the Israeli Food, Financial, and Automotive Sectors
Food sector:
An indictment was filed against a supermarket chain for the first time, for attempting to reach a restrictive trade arrangement through public statements in the media, which included intimations about future price hikes. In this case, the Competition Authority also filed for the first time a criminal indictment for violations of the Food Law, which prescribes prison sentences of up to three years (the Victory case).
The Director General of the Competition Authority also recently announced the imposition of heavy pecuniary sanctions exceeding ILS 10 million on local food and consumer goods suppliers for violations of the Food Law. This is another example of the Competition Authority’s increased enforcement of the Food Law, after previous years of alleged under-enforcement.
Financial sector:
The Director General announced her intention to declare the five largest banks a concentration group in relation to deposits and to issue directives to them to increase competition and present comparative information to customers. The Director General rarely exercises her authority to declare a concentration group and this marks the first such measure in the financial sector.
In addition, Israel Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim were fined ILS 80 million for holding minority stakes (under 25%) in a competing fintech company providing financial services. The Director General deemed this an illegal restrictive trade arrangement that could harm competition. This first-of-its-kind, unprecedented move emphasizes the need for early and careful examination of minority stake acquisitions in potential or actual competitors, even if such holdings do not constitute a merger requiring the Director General’s approval.
Automotive sector:
The Director General of the Competition Authority issued unusual recommendations to the Ministry of Transportation to refrain from renewing import concessions for several popular automobile brands held by major import groups, with the goal of reducing concentration in a sector where five major groups command about 70% of the private vehicle market.
This move is intended to prevent preservation of a concentrated market structure, improve entry conditions for new or smaller importers, and ensure effective competition. It also demonstrates the use of familiar administrative tools—such as licenses, permits, and import concessions—to promote competition and integrate competitive considerations in sectoral decision-making, without having to wait for lengthy enforcement proceedings to conclude. This signals a profound change in regulatory perception in the automotive sector and marks the start of a broad process to reexamine the allocation of import concessions as a key component of Israel’s competition policy.
Structural Reforms and Regulatory Transparency in Israel
In addition to stepped-up enforcement, various regulatory measures were implemented to lower entry barriers and increase competition in the economy.
Gradual bank licensing frameworks:
The Bank of Israel and the Ministry of Finance adopted a framework enabling the entry of new banks under reduced capital and regulatory requirements (“lean model”). This framework includes relief in senior executive remuneration and an exemption from specific regulatory obligations for several years. It serves to incentivize non-bank entities to enter the market.
“What’s good for Europe is good for Israel” reform:
The import reform was significantly expanded, enabling imports of products into Israel based solely on compliance with European and American standards and an importer’s declaration. This reform is designed to cut costs and increase business certainty, despite concerns of harm to local manufacturers.
Transparency during merger proceedings:
The Competition Authority began publishing on its website a list of transactions under review in real time. This move increases transparency and enables third parties to address transactions in their early stages.
Summary and Outlook for 2026: Strategic and Practical Recommendations
Business activity in 2026 will require extreme caution and rigorous risk management in the areas of competition and economic enforcement. The trends recorded in 2025 show that regulatory authorities are tightening enforcement, not only in cases of coordination between competitors, but also in cases involving public statements that may spur such coordination, non-controlling minority shareholding in competitors, or any other conduct that may raise barriers to competition.
Managers’ and officers’ criminal exposure is higher today than ever before, including for actions previously perceived as legitimate, or that were not subject to enforcement measures.
Accordingly, we recommend that corporations and managers implement the following measures:
- Update and implement compliance programs: Update compliance programs to include specific reference to the Food Law and the prevention of harm to parallel imports. In addition, provide periodic employee training that highlights instances in which managers may be held personally liable for criminal or administrative violations.
- Manage communications and public statements: Interviews, statements, and forecasts relating to prices or business strategies require advance legal consultation, since any “signaling” to competitors may be deemed an attempt to reach a restrictive trade arrangement.
- Perform due diligence for every acquisition transaction, even for a minority stake: Even the acquisition of less than a 25% stake in a company requires an in-depth economic-competitive analysis, since the shareholding itself may be deemed a restrictive trade arrangement if the stake is in a potential or actual competitor.
- Implement a zero-tolerance policy for obstructing investigations: Clarify that deleting messages or destroying documents after the opening of an investigation constitutes a serious criminal offense, which may result in an indictment against the perpetrator, even if he himself did not violate the Competition Law.
- Re-examine conduct opposite parallel importers: Direct importers must ensure that their engagements and actions cannot be construed as attempts to block parallel imports.
- Review commercial terms: Corporations with a significant market share must ensure that their commercial terms are reasonable and justifiable, to avoid allegations of abuse of monopolistic power.
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Adv. Gal Rozent is a partner and head of the firm’s Antitrust and Competition Department.
Barnea Jaffa Lande’s Antitrust and Competition Department provides legal services across all aspects of antitrust and competition law. It represents clients in criminal and civil courts, before the Competition Tribunal and the Director General of Israel’s Competition Authority, and vis-a-vis other legislative and regulatory authorities. The team also guides clients in a wide range of business transactions, offering ongoing legal counsel throughout the process.