Break it up: Mofcom's new rules on divestment
The competition regulator has released new legislation clarifying the divestiture process that occurs as part of merger regime enforcement, however there are concerns relating to the publicity of timeframes and the amount of discretion the government has in setting the terms of a divestment
Issue: September 2010
Keywords (click to search):
Mayer Brown JSM
Mofcom
AML
divestment
divestiture
China’s Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom) has published new rules governing the divestment of business operations or assets, where this occurs as a condition of Mofcom’s approval of an M&A deal under the Anti-monopoly Law (AML) merger control regime.
The Tentative Provisions for the Implementation of Asset or Business Divestitures of Concentrations of Business Operators (关于实施经营者集中资产或业务剥离的暂行规定) (Divestiture Rules) came into effect on July 5 2010. Although the Divestiture Rules are termed “provisional”, and thus may be updated over time, they have full legal effect in their current form.
The rules are the latest addition to an evolving set of framework documents relating to regulatory enforcement of the AML, and their publication can be viewed as bringing the AML merger control regime another step closer to alignment with similarly broad-reaching (but more mature) regimes in Europe and the United States. However, like many aspects of...
Please login or register below to read this article.