FAS REPRESENTATIVES SHARED MERGER CONTROL EXPERIENCE

With competition authorities of APEC economies

On 1 - 2 March a training workshop on informational exchange with the best merger control practices in APEC economies took place in Port-Moresby (Papua – New Guinea).

Representatives of competition authorities from Vietnam, Korea, Peru, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua – New Guinea, Australia, and the US discussed merger control regulations in their jurisdictions, shared experiences of merger investigations in line with their national laws, and analyzed mergers investigated by competition authorities recently.

Roman Fedyukov, Deputy Head of Antimonopoly Regulation Unit, FAS Department for Regulating Communications and Information Technologies, informed the foreign colleagues that under the Law “On Protection of Competition” Russian antimonopoly body investigates and allows mergers between economic entities. He gave examples of FAS work in the course of considering “Bayer-Monsanto” and “Yandex – Uber” mergers.

“In a digitalizing economy, investigations of mergers between large companies that use and transfer big data and intellectual property, new regulatory approaches and mechanisms should apply. The National Plan for Developing Competition in Russia provides for such approaches to antimonopoly regulation in a digital economy”, emphasized Roman Fedyukov.

The workshop participants discussed various merger control regulations (forced / voluntary), used by competition authorities of APEC economies; issues facing competition authorities in merger investigations and employment of different merger control arrangements; as well as tools used by competition authorities to enhance performance of the regulations.

Deputy Head of FAS Andrey Tsyganov pointed out: “Involvement of FAS staff in such events enable obtaining information abut the current trends in antimonopoly regulation and investigations conducted in the economies of the Asian-Pacific region, and share experience of antimonopoly regulation in Russia. Such interaction encourages further cooperation in investigating cross-border cases in APEC economies.