Minority Participations and Concentration Law: A New Relief from the European Commission

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[...] To what extent do economic concentrations constitute or not an obstacle to free competition? The assertion 'the end justifies the means' takes on its full dimension with economic concentrations. If the purpose of such an operation is, in a blatant manner, to increase the economic power of a company, it can only achieve this at the price of legal modifications calibrated by corporate law. This primarily involves merger and acquisition operations or absorption, but other procedures are possible, even if they are less common in practice. [...]

[...] Four months later, the same Mr. Bricolage company pleads in summary proceedings that these commitments would have economically prejudicial consequences for the group and the stores concerned by the commitments and tries to convince the Council of the urgency of the situation. To explain the quite flagrant incoherence of his behavior, the applicant argues that these commitments were proposed only to avoid the additional delay implied by entering into contentious proceedings. In short, there was indeed a kind of procedural opportunism explicitly assumed The Council of State thwarted this strategy by observing that the commitment was 'proposed' and 'taken' with full knowledge of the parties themselves. [...]

[...] The law on economic concentrations has been modernized over the past few decades. The latest developments were made by the Law on the Modernization of the Economy (known as LME) of August Opinions or guidelines issued by the Competition Authority complement this normative corpus. Beyond and in consideration of the financial but also political stakes of economic concentrations, the Competition Authority exercises constant control. At the end of the control, the Competition Authority may directly authorize the planned operation, or authorize it subject to one or more commitments. [...]

[...] The answer given by the Court to this question is negative: the notion of unique concentration only serves to delimit the scope of the analysis. The participations could only have been called into question if they had in themselves characterized a concentration. In short, the legal reality catches up with this stage the economic fiction that the notion of 'unique concentration' contains. B.Notion of 'control': new developments around minority participations and portage 1/ Minority participations: the caseAer Lingus, the beginning of a long story? [...]

[...] This was the case in a matter Duke Street where the concerned assets came from different people; the conditional link was not specified in all the acts, but the final objective was unique 2/ The concept of concentration unique at the European level More specifically, it is at the European level that the concept has been enriched. The caseAer Lingus judged by the Court particularly catches the eye. In this case, the Irish government had decided in 2006 to privatize the company Aer Lingus. Ryanair, its competitor, acquired a quarter of the capital and, a few days later, launched a takeover bid on the remaining shares. The operation was then notified to the Commission. [...]