On 19 October 2023, the European Commission (EC) published its Annual Report on the screening of foreign direct investments into the Union, covering the year 2022.
To embed, copy and paste the code into your website or blog:
On 31 March 2021, the UK Takeover Panel (the Panel) published Response Statement 2020/1 (the RS) in response to the Public Consultation Paper 2020/1 published by the Panel on 27 October 2020 (the PCP). The PCP proposed significant changes to the UK Takeover Code (the Code) with regard to the offer timetable and the treatment of conditions to offers. For more on the PCP’s proposals, see our 29 October 2020 client alert “UK Takeover Panel Proposes Significant Changes to the Offer Timetable and the Treatment of Conditions.”
The RS confirms that the Panel will adopt the amendments proposed in the PCP, subject to certain minor modifications. The amendments to the Code will take effect on 5 July 2021. The Code, as amended, will apply to all offers which are announced in accordance with Rule 2.7 of the Code on or after 5 July 2021 (except where to do so would give the amendments retroactive effect).
To embed, copy and paste the code into your website or blog:
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.
To embed, copy and paste the code into your website or blog:
In this update, we consider certain key statistics, trends, developments and highlights regarding U.K. public M&A transactions governed by the U.K. City Code on Takeovers and Mergers (the Takeover Code) that were announced during the second half of 2020. For a review of the first half of 2020, see our client alert “UK Public M&A Update H1 2020.”
Key Statistics and Trends
2020 vs. 2019
Although dealmaking in the first half of 2020 was severely affected by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a comparison of the number and size of deals in H2 2020 against 2019 shows the beginning of a return to pre-pandemic levels of activity. H2 2020 saw 28 offers, a decrease of 26.3% from the 38 offers in H2 2019, but an increase of 115.4% over the 13 offers in H1 2020.