Minority Participations and Merger Control Filing Requirements in East Asia

Nov 05, 2014

CPI Asia Column edited by Vanessa Zhang (Global Economics Group) presents:

Minority Participations and Merger Control Filing Requirements in East Asia – Maxime Vanhollebeke & Shan Hu (Norton Rose Fulbright, Hong Kong)

In July 2014, the European Commission published a White Paper with several proposals for changing the EU Merger Regulation.¹ Amongst those, the Commission is proposing to extend the scope of the EU merger control regime to also cover certain non-controlling minority participations. This proposal has led to criticism that the EU merger control regime could be overreaching. In this article we briefly contrast the current EU merger control regime applicable to minority investments with the rules applicable in a selection of East Asian jurisdictions. As will become apparent, non-controlling minority participations may already today be caught by merger control requirements in Asia.

The notion of concentration: two camps

With the notable exception of Hong Kong² and Malaysia, competition law jurisdictions across East Asia have adopted a merger control regime as part of their competition law framework.³ Some jurisdictions like South Korea, Taiwan and Japan have had a merger control regime in place for many years. In other places (such as China, Indonesia, Vietnam or Singapore) the regime was introduced more recently.

Except for Singapore, most East Asian jurisdictions have opted for a mandatory merger control regime: a notification will be requir