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Commissioned by the U.K. government to review its antitrust regime, Conservative Member of Parliament John Penrose’s “Power to the People” report proposes streamlined, modest changes rather than wholesale reform to the current regime. The report’s recommendations are outlined below:
Merger reviews and antitrust investigations should be done “faster, better,” with all but the most complicated cases resolved “within weeks or months rather than years.” Companies should be able to resolve cases at any time with remedies, and investigations should take place within a transparent and predictable legal framework;
Transport
Following publication of the Bill and related materials on 11 November 2020, a number of concerns were raised about the proposed regime and the new burdens it would likely impose on businesses and investors. Many of these concerns related to the potential breadth and lack of specificity in the way the sectors subject to mandatory notification were defined. The potential consequences of completing a transaction within the mandatory regime without having obtained the approval of the Secretary of State for the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) including the voiding of the transaction and the risk of incurring substantial criminal and civil penalties raised the likelihood of a large number of deals being notified where there was no real threat to national security in order to avoid any risk of unintended noncompliance.
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In November 2020, the UK published a draft of its new National Security and Investment Bill ( NSIB ), heralding the introduction of a new regime for reviewing investments on national security grounds. The Bill introduced a mandatory pre-screening mechanism for certain deals involving investments in sensitive sectors. The draft was accompanied by proposed definitions for the seventeen sensitive sectors to which the mandatory notification requirement would apply. These definitions were the subject of a public consultation, which ran from 11 November 2020 until 6 January 2021. For more detail on the scope of the NSIB, please see our original alert here.
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Moves to ensure London’s listing rules are fit for the 21
st century cannot come too soon.
A review released alongside Rishi Sunak’s Budget this week suggests the UK aims to become Europe’s leading destination for special purpose acquisition vehicles (Spacs). The move could help reverse the London Stock Exchange’s dwindling share of global floats, but their history in the US suggests investors need to take care.
Spacs essentially offer a “backwards IPO” and easy route to market for a private company. They are cash shells, known in the US as “blank cheque” companies, with no commercial operations. They raise capital through an initial public offering for the purpose of acquiring an existing company. As the companies have no operations, the disclosure requirements and listing documentation are much easier and less costly.