Competition Commission of India Revises Long Form for Merger & Acquisitions

What is the News?

Competition Commission of India(CCI) has revamped the content and format of information regarding parties to a Combination. They need to file with the CCI when their post-merger market share exceeds a specified threshold.

According to the revised format, parties to a Combination need to file a report to the CCI when the combined market share is more than 15% in the case of a horizontal overlap and over 25% in the case of a vertically related market.

What is Combination?

Put simply, a Combination is a merger, acquisition, or amalgamation between two or more enterprises or businesses.

The Competition law puts the responsibility on the government to control such mergers, acquisitions and amalgamations so that there is fair competition in the market.

Types: There are three types of Combinations:

Horizontal combinations: It is formed between the enterprises that operate at the same level of the production process and there are substitute goods available for the same. 

– Sometimes such a combination can be bad in law as it reduces the competition in the market and which leads to “high pricing power of one power” of one combination. This is bad for the consumers because they are forced to buy the goods at a higher price value. 

Vertical combinations: It is a non-horizontal combination, wherein the firms are in different levels of supply and distribution of a product. 

– The formation of vertical combinations leads to a pro-competitive environment in the market which further results in process control, more market share and establishing a better supply chain.  

Conglomerate combinations: It involves enterprises or firms that are unrelated in their business fields, and they form a merger or combination. For example: If one company is involved in the production of goods, while another company provides services for the same. Then they tend to collaborate with each other for making better profit standing in the market.

Source: This post is based on the article “Competition Commission of India Revises Long Form for Merger & Acquisitions” published in PIB on 4th April 2022.