COMESA publishes new Merger decisions

In the past week, the COMESA Competition Commission published the following decisions in its most recent merger cases, resulting from the CCC’s 14th meeting:

• Case 1/15: Cannon (insurance) – decision time: 176 days – 4 member states affected.
• Case 2/15: ImproChem (water treatment) – decision time: 166 days – 12 member states affected.
• Case 3/15: Chlor Arkali (food-grade salt) – decision time: 135 days – 3 member states affected.

…and from its 15th meeting:

• Case 4/15: Telkom SA (information and telecom technology) – decision time: 11 days (!) – 10 member states affected
• Case 5/15: Platform Specialty Products (fungicides, herbicides, and insecticides) – decision time: 112 days – 9 member states affected

Of note are the following:

1. The record time — 11 calendar days — in which the CCC resolved the Telkom transaction in favor of the South African provider, which aquired a BBBEE entity, despite the fact that the affected geographies encompassed 10 COMESA member states.
2. The average time it took for the CCC to clear these 5 transactions was 120 days from notification to decision.
3. All 5 notified transactions were unconditionally approved.
4. The voting Commission members were, in all cases, Chilufya Sampa (Zambia), Thabisile Langa (Swaziland), and Alexander Kububa (Zimbabwe).

Finally, we observe that none of these merger matters presumptively benefitted from the upward-adjusted threshold (>$5 million), as they date to a pre-Assessment Guidelines era (see also here).

AAT’s updated COMESA merger statistics are thus as follows: