Looking back at 2022 Looking back, 2022 has been a turbulent year for competition law and policy in Korea. In terms of digital competition policy, the pendulum has swiftly swung away from regulation to competition enforcement. With the arrival of a new President and administration, the previous administration’s platform regulation bill lost momentum. Instead, the…
The year of 2022 was marked by the first amendment of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) since its entry into force in 2008 and the gradual shift of the enforcement focus towards the objectives of the unified national market. Amendment of the Anti-Monopoly Law and other legislative developments First, the AML amendment incorporated the “fair…
In the last couple of months alone, the Serbian national competition authority (NCA) has started as many as three new gun-jumping investigations. The investigations relate to transactions which parties failed to notify in Serbia even though the Serbian merger filing thresholds were apparently exceeded. On surface, this may indicate an increased risk for parties who…
On 28 November 2022, the EU adopted the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, giving the European Commission powers to intervene to tackle foreign subsidies distorting competition in the EU internal market. The FSR, due to apply by mid-2023, will have a major impact on companies that engage in M&A and public tenders in the EU, and which…
The wheels of the German competition authority’s enforcement of its dedicated rules on digital markets have started to turn (on the technical and substantive aspects of Section 19a GWB, see previous posts here and here). According to the recently introduced rules, the Bundeskartellamt first formally determines that an undertaking is of paramount significance for competition…
On November 17, 2022, Canada’s federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry formally announced that the federal government is launching a comprehensive review of the Competition Act (Act) and Canadian competition policy. This announcement follows through on the Minister’s previous indications that significant reforms were in the works, and comes after the government enacted more…
Introduction The Turkish Competition Authority (“TCA”) has rendered several decisions in recent years concerning the exchange of competitively sensitive information. A significant number of these decisions have involved negative clearance/exemption applications made to the TCA by undertakings seeking to lawfully exchange information among themselves. In this regard, the Turkish Construction Equipment Distributors and Manufacturers Association[1]…
The Canadian government announced a new policy on October 28, 2022 (the Policy) under the Investment Canada Act (ICA) governing investments by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Canada’s critical minerals sector. The government followed the issuance of the Policy with an announcement on November 2, 2022, that it had ordered three Chinese investors to divest their…
The impressive acceleration in mergers and acquisitions, combined with the promotion of disruptive business strategies, has put the ‘regulatory gap’[1] paradox at the heart of the current European merger control policy debate. While the current EU merger control regime risks fragmentation with the advent of the new Guidance on Referral Mechanism and the Digital Markets…
The Turkish Competition Authority (TCA) has rendered a number of decisions, particularly in recent years, on whether on-site inspections have been hindered or complicated. These include two recent decisions on D-Market Elektronik Hizmetler ve Ticaret A.Ş. (“Hepsiburada“), one of the largest e-marketplaces in Turkey. In the first of these decisions, the TCA examined whether the…
