On 24 February 2022, the Parliament of Ukraine, in connection with the large-scale military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, approved a decree of the President of Ukraine on the imposition of martial law in the country. The military aggression has significantly affected the activities of most public authorities in Ukraine, including the Ukrainian…
In April 2018, the European Commission (“EC”) imposed two fines on the multinational cable and telecoms company Altice (“acquirer”) in relation to its acquisition of PT Portugal (“target”), a telecommunications and multimedia operator.[1] The EC held that the acquirer both failed to notify the concentration prior to implementation under Article 4 of the EU Merger…
In light of the European Commission’s recent gun-jumping investigation concerning Illumina’s acquisition of GRAIL, what has been the gun-jumping track record of the Serbian competition authority and what to expect in the future? What is the potential fine for gun-jumping in Serbia? The Serbian Competition Act prescribes a standstill obligation, providing that the parties…
The Montenegrin national competition authority (NCA) has published its track record in pursuing gun-jumping violations in the last three years – and the number of violations detected by the authority is surprisingly high. What do Montenegrin merger control rules say about gun-jumping? Aside from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro is another Western Balkan…
According to a recent press release by the Austrian Federal Competition Authority (AFCA), in the course of a general market and media monitoring AFCA became aware of the merger between the two US-based companies Facebook and GIPHY, which took place in May 2020, and consequently initiated investigations based on suspicion of a violation of the standstill…
On 12 March 2021, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), China’s competition authority responsible for the enforcement of the Anti-Monopoly Law (AML), has announced ten decisions imposing maximum fines for the failure to notify economic concentrations under the applicable merger control rules. The sanctions targeted China’s leading tech companies, which have been recently subjected…
On 21 January 2021, the Ukrainian Supreme Court (Supreme Court) annulled one of the highest fines of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMC) for gun-jumping. The judgement upheld the lower courts’ decisions, which in turn quashed the AMC’s 2019 decision to impose approx. EUR 1.9 million on a Ukrainian group subsidiary for the acquisition of…
Antitrust lawyers often work under time pressure when assessing the relevant thresholds to determine where a merger filing must be submitted. They usually keep the requests concerning turnover to a minimum, because turnover is generally attributed to where the customer is located. However, if the parties are not familiar with the geographic allocation rules under…
On 4 March 2020, the European Court of Justice (“CJEU”) rendered its judgment in the Marine Harvest case.[1] The CJEU dismissed Marine Harvest’s appeal against a European Commission (“Commission”) decision in which the Commission imposed two separate fines of EUR 10 million each for failure to notify a transaction[2] and for implementing that transaction prior…
Key takeaways In November, the European Commission (“Commission”) published its much-anticipated reasoning in the Canon/Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation (“TMSC”) merger infringement case.[1] Through this decision, which resulted in a remarkable €28 million fine against Canon for purely procedural contraventions, competition practitioners have gained further insight into the Commission’s standpoint on the use of warehousing structures…
