Clifford Chance
The Jury is Out: an Assessment of Proposed Reforms to Australia's Merger Control Regime for Addressing Competitive Harm in the (Digital) Economy
12 June 2020
This paper, by senior associate Mark Grimes and partner Dave Poddar, examines the substantive and procedural proposals put forward by the ACCC for reforming and strengthening enforcement power under Australia's merger control regime against the challenge of "Killer Acquisitions".
In July 2019, the ACCC released its Final Digital Platform Inquiry Report. As part of this inquiry, the ACCC looked at whether Australia’s merger control regime was fit-for-purpose to address such challenges through examining acquisitions by Google and Facebook, and economies of scope created via control of data sets. The Report concluded that these were two factors that had contributed to the dominant market positions of Google and Facebook in Australia and that law reform was needed.
In examining these proposed reforms, this paper considers the extent to which such proposals would materially change Australia’s current merger control framework, and whether they would be likely to facilitate more effective regulation of “Killer Acquisitions.”
First published in the CPI Antitrust Chronicle issue on Killer Acquisitions May 2020 –II. To get access to the full issue of the Chronicle, as well as all the resources of the CPI website visit www.competitionpolicyinternational.com
