Europe’s Prime Courtroom on Merger Evaluate: No Offers Are ‘Off the Desk’ – Cooley M&A

The European Union’s prime courtroom lately confirmed that an M&A transaction that doesn’t require necessary pre-merger authorization could also be investigated post-merger on suspicion that the transaction concerned an ‘abuse’ of the acquirer’s ‘dominant place’. Per the ruling within the Towercast case, pre-merger authorization beneath the EU Merger Regulation (or EU member state equivalents) is required for sure specified transactions, however the guidelines on merger overview don’t exclude the applicability of the final antitrust prohibitions in Article 101 (restrictive agreements) and Article 102 (abuse of dominance) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and EU member state equivalents.