We have recently seen several articles and law firm client alerts incorrectly identifying the filing fee schedule of COMESA.  This post is designed to clarify and to provide accurate information to our readers.

Rule: The filing fee for a merger notification under the COMESA regime is the lower of:   [1]   500,000 COMESA-$,  or    [2]   0.5% of parties’ combined annual turnover or asset value within the COMESA market.

The confusion as to “higher of” vs. “lower of”, which has sprung up in many firm publications, may be due to the somewhat awkwardly worded language of the amendments to the original 2004 Competition Rules.  The amendments changed the text of Rule 55(4), dealing with the fee schedule and its calculation.

Example:  The two notifying parties have a combined turnover of 90m COM$ in the common market of COMESA.  In this scenario, 0.5% of 90m COM$ equals 450,000 COM$, which is lower than the maximum fee of 500,000.  Thus, the fee to be paid by the parties is 450,000 COM$.

As a rule of thumb, if the combined annual turnover/revenues/asset values of the notifying parties is 100 million COMESA-$, then the fee will be the maximum 500,000 amount.  Otherwise, it will be lower.