Merger Control in the United Kingdom and European Union

Anyone involved in a public takeover bid, an acquisition, or even a joint venture, increasingly needs to take account of the complex web of rules and policy governing merger control in the United Kingdom and the European Union.

This guide sets out, concisely and clearly, the rules and procedures applicable at both national and EU level. It identifies whether a transaction will come under the UK or the EU system, who needs to be notified, when and how notifications need to be filed, and the various stages of the process. This is an area where policy - rather than just legal rules - plays a central role, and it is a particulary valuable feature of this guide that it identifies the various strands and developments of merger policy in Whitehall and in Brussels.

The book has been fully updated to take account of the new legislative and interpretive measures introduced by the European Commission in December 1994 on the application of the EC Merger Regulation, as well as the UK statutory instruments enacted in March 1996 to amend merger control and competition rules, and recent developments involving mergers in the privatised utilities.

Included in this single volume are also the texts of the relevant UK and EU legislation.

The authors are both experts in this area from the leading international law firm Norton Rose. Riccardo CePBi, who wrote the chapter on EC merger control, is a Partner of Norton Rose, working in the firm's Competition and EC Department and based in its Brussels office; he is a solicitor in England and an Avvocato in Italy. Michael Grenfell, author of the UK chapter, is a solicitor in Norton Rose's Competition and EC Department based in its London office; he recently spent 18 months working in the Competition Policy Division of the UK's Department of Trade and Industry.

This guide will be of interest to all businesses involved in (or contemplating) transactions which could come under the rules, to their lawyers, bankers, accountants and other professional advisers - as well as to policymakers and observers of this developing area of law and policy.