Tag: stats

Business community embraces COMESA competition law: First-ever #CCCworkshop at full capacity

Posted on by andreasstargard

The first-ever COMESA-sponsored competition law workshop focussed solely on the business community, currently underway in Nairobi, Kenya, stretches the capacity of the Hilton conference room where it is being held.

The event’s tag line is “Benefits to Business.” Especially now, with the African continent sporting over 400 companies with over $500m in annual revenues, the topic of antitrust regulation in Africa is more pertinent than ever, according to the COMESA Competition Commission (CCC).

The head of the Zambian competition regulator (CCPC), Dr. Chilufya Sampa, introduced the first panel and guest of honour. He identified the threats of anticompetitive last behaviour as grounds for he need to understand and support the work of he CCC and its sister agencies in the member states.

With COMESA trade liberalisation, the markets at issue are much larger than kenya or other national markets. The effects of anticompetitive conduct are thus often magnified accordingly.

The one-stop shop nature of the CCC’s merger notification system simplifies and renders more cost-effective the transactional work of companies doing business in COMESA.

The Keynote speaker, Mr. Mohammed Nyaoga Muigai, highlighted the exciting future of the more and more integrated African markets, offering new challenges and opportunities. He challenged the audience to imagine a single market of over 750 million consumers. Companies will have to think creatively and “outside the box” in these enlarged common markets.

His perspective is twofold: for one, as a businessman and lawyer, but also as a regulator and board chairman and member of the Kenyan Central Bank. Effective competition policy (and access to the legal system) allows to prepare the ground for the successful carrying out of business in the common market. Yet, businesses must know what the regulatory regime actually is. Therefore, the duty of lawyers is to educate their clients about the strictures and requirements of all applicable competition law, across all COMESA member states.

After a group photo, the event continued with an informative presentation by Mr. Willard Mwemba on key facts that “companies should know” on merger control in the (soon enlarged to 21 member states, with the imminent addition of Tunisia and Somalia) COMESA region, starting with its historical roots in COMESA Treaty Article 55 and continuing through the current era since 2013 of the CCC’s regulatory oversight.

Willard Mwemba, Head of M&A at the CCC

He provided relevant merger statistics, jointly with Director of Trade affairs, Dr. Francis Mangeni, which were of great interest to the audience, followed by a discussion of substantive merger review analysis as it is undertaken by the Commission. The benefits of the “one-stop-shop” characteristic of CCC notification versus multiple individual filings were extolled and individual past M&A cases discussed.

AAT will live-update the blog as the event progresses.

Dr. Sampa, CCPC executive

Dr. Sampa, as head of the Zambian CCPC and a former CCC Board member, emphasized the importance for companies to have functioning and well-implemented antitrust compliance programmes in place.

A spirited discussion was had relating to the 30% market share threshold the Commission utilises to evaluate triggers for launching antitrust conduct investigations. Primerio’s Andreas Stargard argued for COMESA’s consideration of an increase in this trigger threshold to 40%, proposing that:

“Especially in an already concentrated market (where players possess majority shares anyway), a low initial share threshold is of little to no additional enforcement value. On the contrary, a low threshold may hamper vigorous competition by smaller to midsize competitors or newer entrants, who wish to grow their (previously innocuous) smaller share of the market but are simultaneously held back in their growth efforts by trying not to cross the 30% barrier so as not to attract the attention of the Commission.”

There was also an issue raised regarding private equity and non-profit / “impact investors” and the like having to bear the burden of notifications and ancillary fees in cases that are otherwise unobjectionable almost by definition (since the investors are not present on the market of the acquired entities in which they invest). Dr. Mangeni indicated that the CCC will investigate and consider whether a proposed change in the applicable Rules to account for this problem may be advisable in the future.

Mary Gurure, head of legal (CCC)

The CCC’s chief legal advisor, Ms. Mary Gurure, presented on conflict of laws issues within the COMESA regime, harmonisation of laws, and CCC engagements with individual member states on these issues.

Crucially, she also mentioned a novel initiative to replicate a COMESA-focused competition enforcer network, akin to the ECN and ICN groupings of international antitrust agencies.

Business panel #CCCworkshop 2018

The conference concluded with a business lawyer panel, in which outside counsel and in-house business representatives voiced their perspectives, largely focusing on the issue of merger notifications. These topics included the (1) burdens of having to submit certified copies of documents, (2) high filing fees (particularly in light of relatively low-value deals being made in the region), (3) comparatively low notification thresholds (e.g., the $10m 2-party turnover limit), (4) remaining, if minimal, confusion over multiple filing obligations, (5) questions surrounding the true nature of the “public interest” criterion in the CCC’s merger evaluation, which could benefit from further clarification via a Guideline or the like, and (6) the importance of predictability and consistency in rulings.

Panellists also commented on the positive, countervailing benefits of the one-stop-shop nature of the CCC, as well as highlighting the friendly nature of the COMESA staff, which permits consensus-building and diplomatic resolutions of potential conflicts.

Mr. Mwemba concluded the event by responding to each of the panel members’ points, noting that forum-shopping based on the costs of filing fees reflected a misguided approach, that the CCC may consider increasing filing thresholds, and that the CCC’s average time to reach merger decisions has been 72 (calendar) days.

COMESA sees slight uptick in merger notifications

Posted on by Editor

Merger filings still dither, but YTD numbers now tentatively promise to exceed FY2015

Making sense of the COMESA Competition Commission’s merger notification site is no  easy undertaking.  The perplexing nature of its case-numbering system mirrors perhaps only the level of confusion surrounding the CCC’s original merger threshold and notification-fee guidelines (e.g., see here on that topic).

As we pointed out here, the merger statistics (as they had been released as of January 2016) for 2015 were disappointingly low.  In today’s post, please note that we are upgrading those numbers, however, to reflect additional material now made available on the official CCC web resource, reflecting 3 additional filings, bringing the year-end total for FY2015 to 18.  Three of those were “Phase 2” cases.  In addition, according to the CCC, there were 3 supplemental cases in which “Comfort Letters” were issued to the parties.

For year-to-date 2016 statistics, the numbers look analogous, albeit somewhat higher than the 2015 slump — that is to say, still diminished from the 2013-2014 height of COMESA ‘mergermania’, during which (mostly international) counsel took the confusion surrounding the CCC notification thresholds to heart and erred on the side of caution (and more fees), advising clients to notify rather than not to (65 in the 2 years), or to seek Comfort Letters, which also were issued in record numbers (19 total for the 2-year period)…   With that said, the agency is now up to 16 merger cases, with 2 Second-Phase matters on deck.

AAT 2016 September mergermania statistics
Number of merger notifications based on CCC-published notices (using educated inferences where the original CCC case numbers, dates and/or descriptions lack intelligibility; note that 2013-14 statistics only reflect actual filings made available online and not the official statistics issued by the CCC of 21 and 43, respectively)                                                                         (c) AfricanAntitrust.com

COMESA acknowledges low merger filing stats

Posted on by Editor

2015 figures plummet 66% year-over-year

Going from 44 notifications in 2014 to 15 filings last year, the Competition Commission of the COMESA common-market area has seen a dramatic decline in merger filings.

Says Andreas Stargard, a competition lawyer with Africa advisory firm Pr1merio:

“These statistics are akin to the agency’s inaugural year — a slump that can only be explained by one of two likely underlying rationales:

Andreas Stargard, editor
A. Stargard

(1) Potential filers have begun to follow widespread advice from legal counsel that effectively admonishes would-be notifying parties not to do so until COMESA establishes a more robust enforcement and notification regime; or (2) — and this is the CCC’s preferred official explanation — the increased filing thresholds as of March 2015 caused fewer transactions to be caught in the mandatory filing net of the regulator.”

Of further concern, Stargard notes, is that the supporting merger documents made available by the CCC do not reflect the purported official statistics.  This fact is reflected in the MergerMania article published on AAT last August..  “For each and every one of the 15 filings identified by the Commission in its official statement, we should be able to see the underlying SOM [statement of merger] and the concomitant Decision — ideally published contemporaneously with the occurrence of each relevant event,” he says.  “Unfortunately, on the CCC merger site, two merger filings are missing entirely (numbers 9 and 10), and the others are commonly published many months after the public-comment deadline for the transactions has long expired.”

To date, a parsing of the (available) 2015 statistics shows that 3 of 15 cases actually went into Phase Two review, Stargard observes.  “This would generally imply a more serious concern raised by the authority in terms of the effect on competition post-merger.  Here, however, it is quite unclear what the potential threat to competition in, for example, a purely private-equity deal would be.  The official decision (no. 15, from November 2015) fails to even hint at a possible threat — as one would commonly expect from a PE to PE transaction, which usually raises little to no antitrust eyebrows…”

Our updated AAT COMESA MergerMania statistics are therefore as follows (again noting the fact that AAT bases its count on only the official, published and available merger documents, instead of relying on mere press release-based summaries published by the CCC).  We also note that to date, 2016 has seen one “merger inquiry notice,” namely of the Dutch Yara / Zambian Greenbelt fertiliser deal.  The public-comment period for that transaction expires on January 22, 2016.

Number of merger notifications based on CCC-published notices
Number of merger notifications based on CCC-published notices

The full text of the COMESA release follows below:

During the year 2015, the Commission assessed and cleared 15 merger transactions. The transactions involved sectors such as insurance, food additives, water treatment, agro-chemical, banking, telecommunication, non alcohol-ic beverage, publishing, packaging and retail. The Commission handled 12 merger notifications in the year 2013 and 44 merger notifications in the year 2014. The Pie Chart below shows the number of mergers handled by the Commission from inception to date.

COMESA merger statistics (official graphic)

As shown in the pie chart the Commission dealt with more mergers in 2014 as compared to 2013 but this trend has gone down in 2015. This trend may be attributed to the supposition that in 2013, the Commission had just commenced operations and therefore some stakeholders were not immediately aware of its existence and operations. By 2014, most stake-holders had become aware of the Commission and its operations, hence the significant increase in the number of mergers notified. The significant reduction in 2015 can be attributed to the supposition that the merger notification thresholds approved by the Council of Ministers on 26 March 2015 which has resulted in smaller mergers escaping the notification. Before 26 March 2015, the merger notification thresholds were Zero hence all mergers were notifiable regardless of size.

MergerMania: Are CCC notifications picking up pace unnoticed?

Posted on by andreasstargard
COMESA Competition Commission logo

COMESA Merger Mania

To answer our rhetorical question in the title above: We don’t believe so.  For the merger junkies among our readership, here is AAT’s latest instalment of “COMESA MergerMania” — AfricanAntitrust’s occasional look at merger matters reviewed by the young multi-jurisdictional competition enforcers in south/eastern Africa.  (To see our last post on COMESA merger statistics, click here).

COMESA publishes new Merger Filings, still fails to identify dates thereof

As nobody else seems to be doing this, let us compile the latest news in merger notifications to the COMESA Competition Commission.  Prior to doing so, however, we observe one item of utility and basic house-keeping etiquette, which we hope will be heeded in future official releases by the agency: Please note the dates of (and on the) documents being issued.  Using the date as a ‘case ID’ is insufficient in our view — the CCC’s current PDF pronouncements invariably remain un-dated, a practice which AAT deplores and which simply does not conform to international business (or government) standards.  So: please date your press releases, opinions, decisions, and notifications on the documents themselves.

We observe that the matters below have not yet been assigned final “case numbers” (at least not publicly) in the style typical of the CCC decisions in the past, namely sequential numbers per year, as they are currently under investigation and have not yet been decided.

We also note that one notification in particular appears to have been retroactively made in 2014, even though it is identified as merger no. 3 of 2015 (Gateway), a peculiarity we cannot currently explain.  Likewise, AAT wonders what the “44” stands for in its case ID (“12/44/2014”), we surmise it’s a typo and should be “14” instead.

Internal Case ID Statement of Merger
Holtzbrinck PG/ Springer Science MER/04/06/2015 SOM/6/2015
Eaton Towers/ Kenya, Malawi, Uganda Towers MER/04/05/2015 SOM/5/2015
Coca-Cola BAL/ Coca-Cola SABCO MER/04/07/2015 SOM/4/2015
Gateway/Pan Africa MER/12/44/2014 SOM/3/2015
Old Mutual/UAP MER/03/04/2015 SOM/2/2015
Zamanita /Cargill MER/03/03/2015 SOM/1//2015

Which brings us to the bi-monthly…

AAT COMESA Merger Statistics Roundup

COMESA Merger Statistics as of July 2015
COMESA Merger Statistics as of July 2015 (source: AAT)

New COMESA merger approvals: stats and details

Posted on by andreasstargard
COMESA Competition Commission logo

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:

 COMESA merger stats 3-2015

Has national antitrust enforcer abdicated to COMESA?

Posted on by Editor

swaziland

Swaziland Competition Commission all but shuttering its doors

Since the creation of its competition-law authority in 2007, COMESA member state Swaziland has seen only 2 (two) enforcement matters, according to a report by the Observer.  Even by COMESA’s statistical standards, 2 matters in 7 years amounts to a record low.

Over in the virtual world, the SCC’s web site reflects the agency’s real-life inactivity: The last update appears to have been made in March 2012, a full two years ago; many, if not most, hyperlinks to “news” are broken or lead the viewer to blank pages; PDF document downloads often fail for no obvious reason.

As to the two discernible cases undertaken by the agency, the Observer article quotes Swaziland Competition Commission (SCC) Advocacy and Communications Officer Mancoba Mabuza as follows:

[T]he first enforcement matter the commission dealt with was The Gables (Pty) Ltd versus Pick n Pay Retailers (Pty) Ltd where the secretariat conducted an investigation into allegations made by The Gables against Pick n Pay.

[T]he second enforcement case involved Eagles Nest (Pty) Ltd and Usuthu Poultry (Pty) Ltd which was investigated by the secretariat and at the conclusion of the investigation; the report was shared with the parties to the matter as the finding was adverse to the parties.

“The matter was then taken to court where the commission successfully defended the case in the court of first instance and the parties then appealed the matter. In a judgement delivered on May 30, the parties’ appeal was dismissed and that the commission will be adjudicating on this matter soon,” he said.

 

COMESA merger stats: January ’14 outperforms first 6 months of 2013

Posted on by Editor
COMESA Competition Commission logo
Three merger notifications in one month set new record for COMESA Competition Commission.

After commenting on the rather lackluster statistics of the first 11 months A.D. 2013, we observed that some deal-making parties might be “flying under the radar” and asked the question:

Combine Point 4 above (low filing statistics) with the zero-threshold and low nexus requirements that trigger a COMESA merger notification, and the following question inevitably comes to mind: With such low thresholds, and the certain existence of commercial deal activity going on in the COMESA zone, why are there so few notifications?

Well, the young agency’s stats have picked up some steam in 2014, it would seem: based on a review of its online document repository, the CC has received a whopping three notifications in January alone.  They are, in chronological order:

  1. Mail & courier services: FedEx / SupaSwift – a transaction involving the acquisition of a South African courier with operations in multiple COMESA member states, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia.
  2. Agricultural distribution and financial services: AgriGroupe / AFGRI Ltd. – Mauritian SPV AgriGroupe seems to be taking AFGRI (listed on the JSE) private.  The target has operations in multiple COMESA countries.
  3. Generic pharmaceuticals: CFR Inversiones SPA / Adcock Ingram Holdings Ltd. – Chilean CFR is buying all of South African off-patent pharmaceuticals manufacturer Adcock’s shares. Notably, the buyer has no COMESA activities; target is active in Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
(c) AAT
Merger notification stats for COMESA as of Feb. 2014

Take-aways:

  • Activity has increased dramatically.  Is it a coincidence & a statistically irrelevant blip on the radar screen?  This remains to be seen. The parties are – unlike last year’s – not “repeat parties” and therefore the increase in notifications seems to be natural/organic growth, if you will, rather than a case of the same bear falling into the same honey-trap multiple times…
  • The Competition Commission has listened to its critics (including this blog). Notably, the CC now clearly identifies the affected member-state jurisdictions in the published notice – a commendable practice that it did not follow in all previous instances, and which AAT welcomes.

Post-scriptum: Adding up the total 2013 tally of notifications, the Tractor & Grader Supplies Ltd / Torre Industrial Holdings transaction (notified after our prior statistics post in November 2013) brought the sum-total of COMESA merger filings to 11 for FY2013.

Some COMESA Merger-Control Musings on the Latest Notification

Posted on by andreasstargard

COMESA Competition Commission logo

It’s been a little while since we last published a note on COMESA.  When there is little substantive news to report, statistics often yield a topic to write about.  And so it is with COMESA.  The statistic at hand: On Monday, 18. November 2013, the Competition Commission announced that it had received its tenth merger notification.

Here are a few observations on the deal (Total Egypt LLC/Chevron Egypt SAE & Total/Beltone Capital Holdings) that spring to mind:

  1. Geography: While the recitals fail to mention any common-market dimension of the transaction, it seems to be centered on COMESA member state Egypt.  On the face of it, this appears to be an Egyptian deal, and as we have become accustomed to, it is hard to infer from the published information what the nexus to the common market is.
  2. Repeat party: The notified deal involves a repeat customer of the CCC, namely the oil & energy company Total.  A different Total subsidiary had filed for (and has since obtained) approval of another transaction in March: the previous Total/Shell deal, also centered on Egypt, was notified in July.  To our knowledge, Total is the first repeat COMESA-notifying party in the CCC’s history.  This may well be a positive sign for the CCC.
  3. Two-for-One, please! The CCC observes in its November 18th notice that it actually received one single notification for de facto two transactions: the Chevron and the Beltone deal.  But the parties were quick to point out – smartly so, some would say – that the deals were closely “interrelated” and therefore should be treated as one transaction for purposes of COMESA review.  Bottom line: only one notification = only one merger filing fee (!) to pay, which can, as we know, easily hit the half-million dollar mark.  In the end, the CCC bought the argument and allowed the parties to make only one single notification.
  4. Overall statistics: 11 months and 10 merger notifications.  That equals less than 1 filing per month.  With such a low number, the CCC is certainly not on track to beat other young competition-law enforcers’ merger stats (such as India’s Competition Commission, which has received an average of over 5 notifications per month since its inception two years ago).
  5. Flying under the radar: Combine Point 4 above (low filing statistics) with the zero-threshold and low nexus requirements that trigger a COMESA merger notification, and the following question inevitably comes to mind: With such low thresholds, and the certain existence of commercial deal activity going on in the COMESA zone, why are there so few notifications?  Are parties simply ignoring the notification mandate?  And if so, what is the CCC — an enforcement agency, after all — doing about this?
  6. Cute or lax? As with other official documents on the CCC’s web site, even this mere 2-pager contains what appears to be an unintended inclusion of internal CCC notes that the agency failed to delete prior to publication.  It reads as follows: “[these abbreviations are not explained anywhere above].”  Someone forgot to review the [short] notice, which has been up for 3 days now, and which does diminish the appearance of professionalism.  More importantly, it calls into question the ability of the agency to edit its own documents carefully, redact properly, and thus its capability to maintain the confidentiality of party or non-party submissions.  Quoth the Raven: “I wish to assure you that all the information you will make available to the Commission shall be treated with the strictest confidentiality and will only be used for the purpose of this inquiry,” as the standard closing CCC paragraph goes…
In conclusion, the most important practical tip for parties contemplating deals in the COMESA region is perhaps the upshot of Point 3 above: Get a package deal! There is now precedent that the CCC permits such combined notifications, which should allow parties to wrap multiple transactions into one lower-cost filing, thereby avoiding what I am calling in an upcoming article the CCC’s “(Pricey) Tollbooth on the African Merger Interstate“…