Merger filings in Africa remain costly and cumbersome

By AAT guest contributor Heather Irvine, Esq.

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa Competition Commission (COMESA) recently announced that it has received over US$3 million in merger filing fees between December 2015 and October 2016.

About half of these fees (approximately $1.5 million) were allocated to the national competition authorities in various COMESA states. However, competition authorities in COMESA member states – including Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe – continue to insist that merging parties lodge separate merger filings in their jurisdiction. This can add significant transactional costs – the filing fee in Kenya alone for a merger in which the merging parties combined generate more than KES 50 billion (about US $ 493 million) in Kenya is KES 2 million (nearly US $ 20 000). Since Kenya is one of the Continent’s largest economies, significant numbers of global transactions as well as those involving South African firms investing in African businesses are caught in the net.

Merging parties are in effect paying African national competition authorities twice to review exactly the same proposed merger. And they are not receiving quicker approvals or an easier fling process in return. Low merger thresholds mean that even relatively small transactions, often with no impact on competition at all, may trigger multiple filings. There is no explanation for why COMESA member states have failed to amend their local competition laws despite signing the COMESA treaty over 2 years ago.

Filing fees are even higher if a proposed cross-border African merger transaction involves a business in Tanzania or Swaziland– the national authorities there have recently insisted that filing fees must be calculated based on the merging parties’ global turnover (even though the statutory basis for these demands are not clear).

The problem will be exacerbated even further if more regional African competition authorities, like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the proposed East African Competition authority, commence active merger regulation.

Although memoranda of understanding were recently signed between South Africa and some other relatively experienced competition regulators on the Continent, like Kenya and Namibia, there are generally few formal procedures in place to harmonise merger filing requirements, synchronise the timing of reviews or align the approach of the regulators to either competition law or public interest issues.

The result is high filing fees, lots of duplicated effort and documents on the part of merging parties and the regulators, and slow merger reviews.

If African governments are serious about attracting global investors, they should prioritise the harmonisation of national and regional competition law regimes.