On December 7, the Provisional Measures on Investigating and Penalizing Violation of Notification Obligations for Concentrations between Business Operators (Provisional Measures) were reviewed and discussed at the No. 57th Ministerial Affairs Meeting of the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and were passed in principle.1
It was discussed at the meeting that currently companies frequently ignore their merger control notification obligations under the Anti-Monopoly Law which has caused negative social impact. Under such circumstances, the Provisional Measures are expected to strengthen MOFCOM's enforcement in relation to investigation and punishment for those companies who fail to honor their notification obligations.
The Provisional Measures have not been officially released to date, and are expected to be published early next year.
A draft of the Provisional Measures was published for comments on June 13, 2011 (see our previous article entitled " MOFCOM publishes draft rules on investigation procedures re failure to notify on concentrations" for more information).According to earlier report, the Provisional Measures are among the three new rules on merger control that are expected to be released within this or next year.The other two new rules deal with merger remedies and notification of concentration below notification thresholds respectively.
Footnote
1 MOFCOM's press release can be found here (in Chinese): http://bgt.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/c/d/201112/20111207869504.html.
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