M&A Year in Review 2023 brochure - Flipbook - Page 79
| M&A Outlook | 2024
EU
EU competition authorities are expected to
remain active and to continue assessing
transactions with an expanded view on theories
of harm. Proposed transactions between
competitors with horizontal overlaps will continue
to attract in-depth regulatory scrutiny in Europe,
and combinations which, in the European
Commission’s view could strengthen an existing
digital ecosystem or could give the acquirer access
to vast amounts of private data about consumers,
will also receive focus from the Commission.
While the merger environment for big tech platforms
is getting tougher in Europe, the Commission is
trying to streamline its merger control proceedings
for non-problematic transactions by updating its
rules for a simplified clearance procedure. These
cases, often relating to limited horizontal or vertical
overlaps, still make up the vast majority of deals.
In addition to merger control review and scrutiny,
the new EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR)
has started to apply. The FSR aims to prevent
non-EU subsidies from distorting the EU market
and requires notifications of M&A transactions if
the parties meet certain financial thresholds.
Initial experience with these filings reveals that
the FSR is applying to more transactions than
initially anticipated.
Transacting parties have also had some difficulty
providing information about foreign subsidies
from all around the globe, and dealmakers in
2024 will need to build in sufficient preparation
time should an FSR filing be required.
Also at the EU Member State level, national
antitrust authorities, such as the German Federal
Cartel office are increasingly deploying novel
merger control tools, such as the transaction value
threshold, to require notifications of transactions
with small target companies not yet generating
significant revenues. We expect this trend to
continue during 2024.
... the Commission is
trying to streamline its
merger control proceedings
for non-problematic
transactions by updating
its rules for a simplified
clearance procedure.”
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