In Joseph Heller’s seminal World War II novel, the protagonist Captain Yossarian finds himself in an inescapable situation. To continue flying into war is insane, but claiming insanity to avoid going to war immediately demonstrates your sanity. There is no way out. This is Catch-22. But the book also has other fascinating passages, touching on…
On March 26, the EU Commission announced a major reform of EU Merger Regulation (EUMR) procedures, arguably the most significant since the 2004 adoption of the current EUMR. The current EUMR expanded EU jurisdiction by broadening the EUMR standard of review and allowing parties to request that transactions notifiable in three or more Member States…
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…
The General Court’s judgment in CK Telecoms[1] annulling the European Commission’s (“Commission”) 2016 prohibition decision of the UK mobile merger raised quite a bit of interest beyond the Brussels competition bar, particularly with European telecom companies, who have long argued that the Commission has taken a far too strict stance on in-country market consolidation. Mobile…
A February 4 conference on competition policy and the Green Deal sponsored by the European Commission’s (the Commission’s) Directorate-General for Competition (DG COMP) highlighted the divergences of opinions among antitrust officials and other stakeholders on how competition policy should support sustainability objectives. DG COMP aims to take a leading role on sustainability issues; its October-November…
We are continuing with our competition law issues of the International Law Talk Podcast. Two weeks ago, I talked to Oliver Bretz, founding partner at Euclid Law and a merger expert, about the fragmentation of EU merger control. We focused particularly on the changes in the EU one-stop-systems through Brexit, the increasing use of EU…
5 Key Takeaways More Deals Take Longer More deals than ever before involved extended CCPC reviews. Of 42 deals notified, 10 involved merger review delays of at least 3 months. Two “Phase 2” reviews, both on going as of 15/01/2021, have each taken 11 months already. According to the CCPC, this trend reflects “the complex…
Despite the pandemic, 2020 has been a very busy year for the Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) and courts in the field of competition law in Germany. The following is merely a selection of interesting developments. It does not include the recently adopted reform of the Competition Act, which merits its own blog. Generally, the FCO…
The December 24 announcement that the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) had reached an agreement in principle on a new Trade and Cooperation Agreement (the TCA) was greeted with sighs of relief on both sides of the Channel. For competition lawyers and parties engaged in M&A activities, however, the work of clarifying…
