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Mission impossible? Teresa Ribera’s mission letter and the future of EU merger review
Executive Vice President Vestager’s momentous tenure as Commissioner responsible for EU competition policy is nearing its end.
Publication | December 2023
On December 18, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice, Antitrust Division (DOJ) (together, Agencies) released updated Merger Guidelines (Guidelines). The Guidelines amend, replace and consolidate the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines and the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines. The Guidelines are not legally binding but provide some predictability to the antitrust bar and merging parties when evaluating the antitrust risk of proposed transactions.
The Agencies previewed draft Guidelines on July 19, 2023. The Guidelines have since been updated after a two-month period in which the Agencies received more than 30,000 comments to incorporate recent case law (after facing criticism that the draft Guidelines ignored decades of recent precedent), provide more clarity, and remove some of the structural presumptions advanced in the earlier draft. The Guidelines reflect and are consistent with positions the Agencies have been taking in recent years.
The final Guidelines, which reflect softened language on some topics, retain their emphasis on transactions that tend to create a monopoly, focus on mergers that may limit rivals’ access to inputs or lead to sharing of competitively sensitive information, advance new theories of harm relating to competition in labor markets, codify aggressive new thresholds for what transactions the Agencies view as presumptively illegal and formalize a new focus on cross-market effects and serial acquisitions.
The Agencies past merger guidelines are frequently cited by courts in Section 7 cases—the Agencies are likely to cite these guidelines in challenges in the coming year in the hope that courts adopt their tighter thresholds as law.
Publication
Executive Vice President Vestager’s momentous tenure as Commissioner responsible for EU competition policy is nearing its end.
Publication
For many global organisations, finding the right balance between having global, unified compliance programs, and the need to address local legal and compliance risks, is a challenge. In this blog, we will address the challenge that money laundering and related issues presents to Indian companies operating in Europe.
Publication
On November 28, 2023, the European Commission (EC) adopted its first list of Projects of Common Interest (PCIs), i.e., projects within the EU territory, and Projects of Mutual Interest (PMIs), i.e., projects connecting the EU with other countries, including 166 projects implementing the European Green Deal.
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