Ring-Fencing Concept in Competition Law: Ukraine vs. EU When merger control rules

Olga G. Mikheieva

Approximately 120 jurisdictions around the world have merger control laws on their books, designed to regulate acquisitions on competition law grounds.

The general theory behind merger control laws is that it is better to prevent a company attaining a position of market power, which would facilitate anti-competitive behavior, than to regulate a dominant company post factum. Therefore, various merger control regimes around the world have one common aim — to detect acquisitions that would result in an unacceptable degree of concentration in the market (usually by establishing a requirement for pre-completion notification or clearance) and prohibit or modify them to remove the anti-competitive effect (if they have not yet gone ahead) or remedy them when a transaction that is doubtful from the competition law perspective has been already competed…