Innovation is essential to increasing productivity in the EU, and thus contributes to boosting growth and jobs. The EU framework for merger control allows the Commission to assess the impact of mergers and acquisitions on innovation. The framework puts the competitive harm caused by reduction of...

In January 2016, the Commission cleared the acquisition of the global #2 beverage can manufacturer Rexam by the global #1 Ball, subject to the divestiture of nearly the whole overlap in Europe. A key feature of the phase 2 investigation is the adoption of customer-centric catch-ment areas as the...

In recent years the Commission examined many telecommunication mergers in Europe and gained significant experience in assessing the different issues raised by consolidations involving mobile-only operators or mobile and fixed operators. While mobileonly mergers often result in horizontal...

The study provides support for an impact assessment concerning the review of the Merger Regulation regarding minority shareholdings. In more precise terms, the study is broken down into two interrelated but discrete topics: (topic 1) the assessment of the features of a certain number of merger...