Copyright 2011, Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP
Originally published in Blakes Bulletin on Competition, Antitrust & Foreign Investment, February 2011
The Commissioner of Competition has announced that the Competition Bureau plans to make "moderate" revisions to its Merger Enforcement Guidelines (MEGs). The MEGs, last revised in 2004, set out the framework the Bureau uses to evaluate the potential competitive effects of mergers.
The Commissioner's announcement follows public consultations designed to assess whether the MEGs reflect current merger review practice, as well as to consider whether the recent revisions to the U.S. Horizontal Merger Guidelines merit changes to the Bureau's MEGs.
According to the Bureau's release, the revisions will be targeted and specific, and will not constitute a wholesale revision of the current framework. Some of the key areas include:
- clarifying the role of market definition in merger review vis-a-vis other evidence of competition effects;
- providing additional guidance on monopsony (buyer power) issues;
- further explanation on how the Bureau assesses transactions involving minority interests or interlocking directorates;
- providing more detailed guidance on how the Bureau assesses unilateral effects, co-ordinated effects and vertical issues; and
- incorporating the Bureau's Efficiencies Bulletin into the MEGs.
The Bureau intends to publish the revised draft MEGs in the second quarter of 2011 and to seek public feedback on the revisions before publishing the final revised MEGs in the fall.
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