Member Article

The AMC completed revision of its procedural rules on merger notifications. The new Merger Regulation significantly reduces disclosure requirements and simplifies filing forms, especially for mergers with no or limited overlaps.

Most notable changes eliminate the requirement to provide:
- detailed information on non-relevant markets – instead, the parties will only have to give a summary of such other activities;
- the list of all group subsidiaries – now, only the Ukrainian ones and those with Ukrainian turnover need to be listed;
- the list of minority shareholdings;
-detailed information on the officers/directors and relatives (subject to conditions);
-some of the documents to be filed along with the notification.

On the other hand, the AMC intends to more thoroughly analyze information on the financing of notified transactions and the filers' ownership structure. Furthermore, to obtain clearance for transactions potentially raising competition concerns, the filling parties will be required to provide more extensive and substantiated explanations based on the economic analysis.

Besides lifting an enormous administrative burden for regular filers, simplified procedural rules are also expected to facilitate the amnesty exercise which is available until 15 September 2016 for mergers that were closed without clearance before 15 September 2015.

The new Merger Regulation will enter into force on 19 August 2016.