Home > Legal articles > Buckle up: Commission speeds up its merger notification procedure
The Commission starts off the new year with a lean and mean filing regime by simplifying its merger review procedure and reducing the information required in its filing forms. This provides you with a speedier and more cost-efficient merger filing process. But beware of the new, more elaborate request for supporting documentation.
The European Commission’s merger simplification package entered into force on 1 January 2014 and streamlines the merger review procedure by including more transactions under the simplified procedure and reducing the information burden on companies having to notify their transactions. The scope of the simplified procedure is widened by:
As a result, more companies will be able to notify their transactions through a short filing form with less detailed information requirements. At the same time, the Commission will be able to clear more mergers without an in-depth investigation of their effects amongst customers, competitors and other parties.
The Commission also wants to alleviate the information overload in its merger notification forms by:
So far so good as to decreasing the information burden for notifying parties and speeding up the process. However, the more elaborate request for supporting documentation may increase the notifying parties’ workload since it now includes:
But forewarned is forearmed. It is advisable to draw up documentation creation guidelines already to reduce the risk of having to provide assailable internal documents as a result of future transactions. Similarly, maintaining a register to keep track of internal documents relating to the potential transaction is recommended as it will facilitate producing this documentation once you need to file.
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