Insights

5 Key Takeaways More Deals Take Longer More deals than ever before involved extended CCPC reviews.  Of 42 deals notified, 10 involved merger review delays of at least 3 months.  Two “Phase 2” reviews, both on going as of 15/01/2021, have each taken 11 months already. ...

P2s Get Longer, But P1s Don’t! Two 2018 P2s, cleared in 2019, took over 320 days.  One of the two decisions is published and runs to 240 pages.  In 2003, Year 1 of modern Irish merger control, a P2 averaged 100 days and a typical P2 decision was 20 pages.  But delays...

325 days from first filing, the CCPC just recently cleared Live Nation’s acquisition of sole control of Irish concert promoter, MCD Productions, a merger of Ireland’s largest ticketing company and venue operator with the country’s biggest concert and event promoter....

After an 18 month investigation involving officials from both the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (“CCPC”) and Ireland’s Director of Public Prosecution, and a first-ever criminal prosecution, a company that gun-jumped Irish merger control rules avoided...

1. More Deals Receive More Scrutiny Of 98 deals notified, 11 received extended CCPC review (including 4 Phase 2 reviews) – the most extended reviews ever conducted by the CCPC in a single year. While no deal was blocked outright, 5 were cleared conditional on...

Following a guilty plea to criminal bid-rigging and obstruction charges, a company director was fined €7,500 by an Irish judge on 31 May and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment (suspended – meaning no jail time).   The executive was also barred from acting as a...

Are perceptions of increased pushback in Brussels and Washington on international combinations reflected in Irish enforcement?  What change (if any) does new management at the Irish agency herald, how did Ireland’s most controversial deal of the year fare in Brussels,...

What light does the European Commission’s much anticipated 130-page decision, published Monday, 19 December 2016, shed on the Commission’s case and the parties’ prospects for appeal? In the second of a series of short blogs on the Apple case, here’s a quick-look...

“Improper and plainly undermines legal certainty and the rule of law.”  This is how four U.S. senators – including the Chairman and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee – recently described the European Commission’s State aid investigation into tax...

Longstanding CCPC dawn raid practice to copy electronic data (including entire email accounts) for later off-site review by investigators is unlawful according to a recent ruling of the Irish Competition Court.  Bulk copying of e-files “will almost certainly, perhaps...

It took five years to draft. But now everything’s go!-go!-go! First published late spring 2014, Ireland’s newest competition law reform could be adopted by July. And though planning was long and time for debate is now short, last minute changes (big ones too)...

Ten years ago today, new rules to bolster competition law enforcement in Ireland – set out in the Competition Act 2002 – entered into force. Introducing the new law, then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Harney, heralded “ … a more focused approach...