Originally broadcast on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - 15:30

The proposed institutional changes to UK merger control may have far reaching effects for companies in 2012. Contemporary knowledge of this area of competition law is critically important in order to avoid increasingly onerous sanctions for non-compliance. The Government considers the merger regime to be one of the key strengths of the UK competition regime, but believes that there is further scope for improvement by addressing the disadvantages of the current voluntary notification regime and by improving the speed and robustness of decisions. The aim is to improve the authority’s ability to identify potentially problematic mergers and make merger remedies more efficient and effective.

This webinar analyses how to differentiate between non-problematic and anti-competitive mergers and discusses the thresholds of notification, whilst comprehensively reviewing the implications of the definitive cases in 2011.

This webinar covers:
·         Mandatory v. voluntary v. hybrid – how to filter non-problematic mergers but not miss anti-competitive mergers?
·         What are the thresholds for notification? 
·         What are the standstill obligations?
·         What will the position of minority shareholders be?
·         Increased costs to business
·         Toughening sanctions for breaching ‘hold-separate’ undertakings/orders
·         Review of big cases in 2011 and their impact on mergers in 2012 
·         Use of econometric tools in merger control (such as UPP, IPRs and GUPPIs)