On 8 April 2025, the General Authority for Competition (GAC) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) published the 5th edition of its Economic Concentration Review Guidelines (formerly known as the Merger Review Guidelines).
This critical update, following the GAC’s public consultation on its proposed amendments to the Guidelines of 1 July 2024, provides essential refinements and clarity on the KSA merger control regime.
With the majority of the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 provisions having entered into force on 6 April 2025, the Competition and Markets Authority has published its Approach Document – setting out enforcement priorities for the next 12 months and what businesses can expect following the widespread reforms to the UK consumer law regime.
The proposed notification thresholds remain essentially unchanged from those released by Treasury in October 2024. The draft forms include short form and long form versions, with the short form version intended to provide a simplified process for acquisitions that are unlikely to raise competition concerns. However, in draft guidance, the ACCC has indicated it will set the bar quite low for when a long form notification is required.
Through Joint Resolution 1/25 by the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Department of State Transformation and Public Function, the Public Competition Regulations for the appointment of senior officials of the future National Competition Authority have been approved.
The Canadian Competition Bureau (“Bureau”) recently published the Consultation on Artificial Intelligence and Competition: What We Heard (“Report”), which summarizes feedback it received from its 2024 public consultation about how AI is impacting competition in Canada. The Bureau will use the insights from the submissions summarized in the Report to inform how it will protect and promote competition in Canada’s AI market.
Over the past week there have been two significant announcements by US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the US Department of the Treasury with respect to the filing of beneficial ownership information reports under the Corporate Transparency Act. Based on these announcements, foreign reporting companies should technically continue complying with the BOI requirements, though there will be no consequences for failing to do so until new regulations are issued. As to domestic reporting companies, there should not be any enforcement of the CTA against such companies or consequences if such companies fail to file BOI reports.
On 4 March 2025, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released transitional guidelines to help businesses navigate the transition to the new mandatory and suspensory merger control regime which comes into force on 1 January 2026.
The Guidelines set out details on key dates and processes for how the ACCC will manage merger clearance reviews during the transition period. The ACCC is encouraging businesses to voluntarily notify transactions under the new regime from 1 July 2025 to avoid the potential need for re-notification if the ACCC is unable to complete its review in time.
Following the enactment of the Digital Markets, Competition & Consumer Act (DMCCA) in May 2024, the new UK digital markets competition regime and changes to the UK competition regime entered into force on 1 January 2025. This landmark legislation brings about significant changes to the UK antitrust regime including giving the Competition & Markets Authority the ability to regulate the technology sector, increased jurisdiction to review mergers, and stronger antitrust investigation powers.
An important policy debate is underway on how EU competition law should apply to exclusionary conduct by dominant undertakings under Article 102 TFEU, against a backdrop of geopolitical tensions on antitrust enforcement, and an urgent need to simplify the regulatory environment and boost Europe’s competitiveness.
In August 2024, the Commission issued a set of draft guidelines for public consultation. These were broadly criticized as rowing back on the economics based approach enshrined in earlier guidance and case law, giving the Commission too much enforcement discretion and providing insufficient practical guidance to business.
Last week, the Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) has initiated criminal proceedings against 162 broiler chick producers for agreeing to set the retail price of broilers chicks on a daily basis in Egypt. According to the ECA, this increased the prices of not only chicks but also consumer’s prices of chickens in Egypt.
The ECA has also issued a cartel decision relating to the advertising and publication market, by prohibiting the conduct of five advertising companies that agreed to refrain from participating in public bids. Both cases violated Article 6 of the Egyptian Competition Law No. 3 of 2005 (ECL).