Merger Control Review 2021 - Australia

Our chapter, published in The Merger Control Review - edition 12, gives an overview of Australia's merger control regime. It describes the options available to parties who wish to seek clearance for their proposed merger: the informal clearance process and the authorisation process and the role of the ACCC in those processes.

The chapter provides a detailed commentary on recent developments in the ACCC's approach to mergers, including its close scrutiny of acquisitions involving nascent competitors or the combination of data sets, and its approach to failing firm arguments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It also explores other aspects of the Australian merger control regime which can take on particular significance in the context of global or multi-jurisdictional transactions, such as the interaction of the ACCC's information-gathering powers with its desire to exchange information and documents with overseas regulators, as well as the absence of any minimum threshold for identifying share acquisitions that may be of concern.

This chapter is reproduced with permission from Law Business Research Ltd. The chapter was first published in The Merger Control Review in August 2021.