ABSTRACT This article shows that dynamic efficiency gains should be better considered in merger control policy, especially in innovative sectors where they are very high and play an essential role. Neglecting those effects leads to serious mistakes in merger assessment (type-1 [Type-1 error relates to erroneously considering anti-competitive a merger which is in reality pro-competitive.]) to the detriment of industry and consumers alike. Starting with the Cournot model with homogeneous products and adding investment in marginal cost reduction, we show that mergers increase firms’ investment and reduce marginal costs. These dynamic efficiency gains add to any static efficiency gains, like synergy and economies of scale. If the total efficiency gains are large enough, they can lower prices and benefit consumers. Technical progress increases the dynamic effects and makes mergers much more likely to be pro-competitive.

India's move from a controlled economy to a liberalized market system needed a robust foundation for competition regulation in order to control how the market worked and make the economy more efficient. The Competition Act, 2002, which was a big change from the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1969, set up the Competition Commission of India (CCI) as the main regulating authority. The Commission's job is to make sure that markets are fair and competitive by blocking agreements that are not fair, controlling the abuse of dominant positions, and keeping an eye on mergers. This paper critically examines the efficacy of the CCI by analyzing its institutional performance, enforcement techniques, and contributions to the development of Indian competition law doctrine. It looks at important court decisions that have changed how the Competition Act, 2002 is used and understood. These include Competition Commission of India v. Steel Authority of India Ltd., Excel Crop Care Ltd. v. Competition Commission of India., DLF Ltd. v. Competition Commission of India., Google LLC v. Competition Commission of India., and Bharti Airtel Ltd. v. Competition Commission of India. The report also talks about some of the CCI's biggest successes, such making merger control more open, enforcing antitrust laws more effectively, and pushing for more competition. However, it points out several problems that make the Commission less effective, such as delays in making decisions, a lack of technical knowledge, constraints on enforcement, and difficulties in regulating new digital markets that have data dominance and network effects. Moreover, jurisdictional overlaps with sectorial regulators continue to hinder effective enforcement and create uncertainty. The study uses a doctrinal and analytical method to look at how the CCI works by looking at academic literature, statutory provisions, and court decisions. It says that even while the Commission has done a lot to make India more competitive, we still need to build institutions, change procedures, and use new regulatory powers to fix problems in the market. The paper finishes with suggestions for changes that will make the CCI more effective, especially in light of digital economies and global competition trends. These changes will help achieve the goals of consumer welfare, market efficiency, and fair competition. Key Words: Competition Law, Competition Commission of India, Anti-Competitive Agreements, Abuse of Dominance, Cartelisation, Digital Markets, Consumer Welfare.

ABSTRACT South Africa faces persistently high poverty and inequality alongside a highly concentrated economic structure, raising questions about whether merger control, especially public‐interest provisions, can contribute to poverty reduction. However, empirical evidence directly linking merger adjudication outcomes to poverty remains limited. This study examines how merger adjudications influence poverty incidence and poverty depth in South Africa, focusing on cumulative approved mergers (CMA), the share approved with conditions, and the share approved with barriers. Using household panel data from National Income Dynamics Survey (NIDS) Waves 3–5 (2012–2017) merged with Competition Commission merger records, and provincial panel data for 2010–2022 from Quantec, the study estimates poverty incidence with logit models and poverty depth with fixed effects (FE) and Heckman selection, complemented by province‐level FE, IV–FE and Driscoll–Kraay corrections for endogeneity and cross‐sectional dependence. The results show that merger activity is related to poverty incidence at the micro level, while conditions provide only weak mitigation and do not robustly reduce poverty depth. At the macro level, mean income reduces poverty and inequality increases poverty across poverty lines. Conditional approvals are associated with lower poverty headcounts, especially at lower‐bound and food poverty lines, whereas barrier‐related outcomes are linked to higher poverty incidence in models correcting for endogeneity. The findings support strengthening the targeting, enforceability and ex‐post monitoring of merger conditions, with particular attention to essential‐goods sectors and vulnerable consumers, and caution against reliance on barriers without complementary protections.

Key Points The prevalence of killer acquisitions is likely overstated, even from a purely theoretical perspective, as the replacement effect that they rely on often fails to hold. Despite claims by advocates of more lenient merger control, the prospect of acquisition does not necessarily induce startups to increase their investment in, or likelihood of pursuing, more disruptive innovation. Welfare-maximizing merger policy must adopt a dynamic perspective, balancing short-term competitive harms against long-term incentives for choosing more disruptive innovation directions. We provide practical recommendations for the design and enforcement of merger control involving innovative startups.

ABSTRACT Academic research is increasingly questioning whether the goals of competition law should extend beyond the traditional focus on economic efficiency and consumer welfare to include non‐economic issues such as social justice, democracy, environmental sustainability and equality. In this regard, the African experience is particularly valuable since public interest considerations (PICs) are a feature of merger control regimes in many African countries. After an analysis of PICs in Africa, the paper zooms in on South Africa's extensive experience in the field, particularly its legal test for determining when PICs are justified in merger assessment and offers recommendations that could inform other countries. Drawing on the South Africa merger assessment, this paper recommends that PICs and the competition standard be analysed separately but in an interrelated manner, as they complement each other. The likely effect of the merger on specific public interests must be identified and considered only when it is substantial and linked to the merger. Additionally, a merger should be prohibited only if the proposed remedies seeking to address the negative effects on the specific PIC are inadequate, inappropriate, disproportionate or unenforceable. Importantly, when PICs collide, competition agencies should balance each public interest against the others, focusing on whether the likely effect is substantial or whether the remedies are inadequate. In sum, competition agencies should adopt public‐interest merger guidelines that provide businesses with the necessary guidance on the legal test and procedures, enhancing legal certainty and attracting investment.

FSR merger control – reflections two years in

Abstract In 2023, the EU prohibited Booking/eTraveli whilst the UK sought to prohibit Microsoft/Activision Blizzard. In both cases, the other authority allowed the merger. The decisions reveal the existence of two issues: a Disconnect Inconsistency in the prohibitions (between (platform-based) market definition and (ecosystem-level) assessment) and a Static/Dynamic Divide (prohibitions grounded in forward-looking ecosystem concerns and clearances grounded in traditional, static indicators). In light of these observations, a workable market definition is proposed: an ecosystem market is a multi-product, multi-actor system, orchestrated by a central firm, which competes as a unit against other such systems. This definition aligns market boundaries with the merger assessment and provides the authorities with a coherent frame for analysing competition both within and between ecosystems. The analysis leads to five takeaways: (i) the two cases reveal analytical and methodological inconsistencies in the practice of the competition authorities; (ii) the proposed definition can guide the authorities towards legally sound, forward-looking merger control; (iii) qualitative and quantitative tools exist to operationalize ecosystem definition and assessment; (iv) market definition remains legally and practically indispensable for consistency and legal robustness of merger control; and (v) when ecosystems compete, the merger question becomes inherently structural, requiring a focus on market definition.

Abstract In the last few years, we have seen an intensification of regulatory oversight in the European Union (EU). The EU has increased its oversight of M&A transactions and, more recently, its oversight of investments. The European Union Merger Regulation (EUMR) has been in force for the last 35 years, but more recently, we have seen the introduction of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Screening regulation as well as a regulation to oversee foreign subsidies by non-EU governments. These developments are a clear illustration of the Commission’s intention to adopt a stricter approach when it comes to the assessment of such initiatives. The article will start by briefly discussing the scope of these regulatory instruments and will then focus on how the notification requirements and the substantive analysis are being conducted under each one of these regimes, trying to draw parallels but also showcasing the differences that these regulatory frameworks have, and which can lead to potential divergence in decision-making (including on the same transaction). The article will discuss in detail the arsenal of the European Commission and of the national regulators in enforcing these rules. This article examines these three regimes not only descriptively but also comparatively, asking what their coexistence means for competition, investment, and regulatory coherence in the EU. By placing the EUMR, the FDI Screening Regulation, and the foreign subsidies regime side by side, the article highlights both the strengths and the shortcomings of this emerging regulatory web. While the coexistence of these regimes gives the EU a more comprehensive approach to safeguarding competition and a level playing field, it also creates risks of duplication, inconsistent outcomes, and legal uncertainty for firms navigating multi-jurisdictional approvals. The value of the article lies in identifying these tensions and assessing whether the EU’s evolving multi-layered approach achieves an appropriate balance between regulatory protection and market openness.

The aim of this study is to examine the regulatory gap in Indonesian competition law regarding the use of user data by platform-based companies after a digital merger, by examining how the current legal framework responds to data-based exclusive practices and assessing its adequacy in regulating the dynamics of digital merger control. The method of this study examines the norms, principles, and legal doctrines contained in legislation, court decisions, legal theory, and scientific writings related to competition law, which are analyzed using current theories of harm. The novelty of this research is the application of the Newer Theory of Harm in analyzing digital mergers and acquisitions, particularly in privacy-based theory, where consumer data protection is an important aspect that needs to be considered in mergers and acquisitions. Consumer data privacy protection can be used as a quality assessment that must be met in the testing process that must be carried out before mergers and acquisitions. The results of the study show that merger regulations in Indonesian competition law are still oriented towards market concentration and price impacts, so they are not yet fully capable of addressing data-based exclusive practices and digital ecosystem dominance post-merger. This study concludes that digital merger supervision in Indonesia needs to be developed by expanding the analysis of big data control and its implications for fair business competition, taking lessons from the experience of the German Competition Authority and the European Union's Digital Markets Act regulations. The conclusion of this study concerns the assessment of mergers and acquisitions in Indonesian Competition Law; learning from the German Competition Authority and the European Union's Digital Markets Act, the government must expand its analysis of how access to big data affects a healthy competition ecosystem.

ABSTRACT This study addresses two key questions: whether state-controlled acquirers receive preferential treatment from the competition authority in China’s merger control, and whether such treatment can be justified. By conducting a full-sample analysis of all merger control cases of listed companies in China from 2017 to 2022, the study finds that, compared with privately-controlled acquirers, state-controlled acquirers are indeed favoured in the merger control process. Although this preferential treatment aligns with China’s industrial policies of ‘promoting takeovers of SOEs’, it is not necessarily reasonable. The analysis shows that the economic efficiency of takeovers initiated by state-controlled acquirers was lower than that of takeovers initiated by privately-controlled acquirers. Given that improving efficiency is the fundamental goal of these industrial policies and is one of the core legislative purposes of the anti-monopoly law and takeover law, the findings suggest that the preferential treatment may not have achieved its intended objectives. In other words, neither equality nor efficiency was realized, which suggests that the differential treatment in merger control may not be justified. Using evidence from China, this study offers insights for China’s future reform of SOEs.

The Netherlands · Merger Control and Investment Screening Developments

As the regulatory landscape in Europe continues to shift, competition authorities in the EU and UK are re-examining the role of efficiency and innovation in merger control. The European Commission and Competition and Markets Authority are under growing pressure to find the right balance between preventing mergers that could harm competition, while also recognizing that some deals may deliver long-term benefits for consumers by driving innovation and improving efficiency.

Corporate Reorganization and Merger Control in Nigeria: A Comprehensive Legal Analysis

A Game of Pac-Man: A Proposal for a Balanced Merger Control Regime Addressing Serial Acquisitions

Big Tech, Antitrust and the Financial Markets Blind Spot

Australia's Tougher New Merger Law

This article provides a comparative analysis of competition law in the Scandinavian countries, with particular emphasis on Norway, Finland, and Sweden. It examines how these jurisdictions apply a coherent regulatory logic to cartel enforcement and merger control, grounded in principles of substance over form, enforcement restraint, and the protection of the public interest. By integrating legal doctrine with economic analysis, the article demonstrates that Scandinavian competition regimes balance strict deterrence of hard-core cartels with forward looking merger control aimed at preventing structural harm to competition. In the European Union, Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union address anticompetitive agreements and the abuse of dominant positions, forming the backbone of EU competition rules, against which the Scandinavian systems are assessed. The analysis shows that effective competition regulation in Scandinavia relies on aligning enforcement practices with broader societal objectives, including consumer welfare and market integrity.

This article examines the interaction between competition law and the social economy, two essential pillars in shaping the contemporary economic system. Based on an analysis of European, Spanish, and international legal frameworks, it explores the points of convergence and tensions between safeguarding free competition and promoting social and sustainable objectives. The study identifies legal instruments that enable compatibility, such as exemptions, social clauses in public procurement, state aid, and platform regulation. It also proposes reforms aimed at incorporating ESG metrics into merger control, clarifying the scope of social clauses, and creating a European governance framework for the social economy. The paper concludes that integration between competition and social economy should be structural rather than exceptional and outlines future research lines on empirical impact, international comparison, and digital regulation.

This paper analyses the evolving use of Art. 22 EU Merger Regulation (EUMR) and national call-in powers as mechanisms for capturing below-threshold killer acquisitions. In September 2024, the Court of Justice (Court) delivered its ruling in Illumina/Grail, rejecting the expansionist interpretation of Art. 22 EUMR by the European Commission (EC), which extended its jurisdiction by allowing Member States to refer transactions that did not meet any national thresholds. Despite this clear judicial guidance, the EC appears to interpret the judgment less restrictively, accepting referrals based on national competition authorities’ call-in powers. The paper argues that the EC effectively sidesteps the Court’s judgment and undermines legal certainty. Whether this approach is in line with the ruling of the Court remains to be seen; the General Court will provide an answer in Nvidia/Run:ai.For the time being, it is necessary to assess whether call-in powers are an appropriate tool. The paper holds that while they may address the regulatory gap, they are largely non-selective, fragmentary, unpredictable and disproportionate. However, this fragmentation presents a regulatory opportunity: the call-in model may be designed in a way that upholds the underlying principles of merger control. The paper concludes with policy recommendations, advocating for a selective, transparent and objective approach that preserves legal certainty – supported by soft law and the use of comfort letters.

Significant Activity on the Domestic Market as a Criterion in Merger Control