SAUDI ARABIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Alex Saleh, Asad Ahmad, Omar Halbouni and Shahad Al-Humaidani, GLA & Company
• In respect of Article 16 (impeding investigation), a fine not exceeding an amount equal to 5% of total annual sales or, where it is not possible to assess the relevant sales, a fine not exceeding SAR5 mil - lion, may be imposed. The amount of the fine may be doubled for a repeat offence. • In respect of other breaches, a fine not exceeding SAR2 million may be imposed. When the Settlement Committee imposes any of these penalties, the following will be taken into account. • If the establishment was engaged in several activi - ties where each activity differed from the others, any fine will be assessed according to the nature of the activity of the subject matter of the violation, taking into account: (a) the activities targeted by the violation; (b) the conditions and circumstances of the viola - tion; (c) the gravity of the violation; and (d) the effects of the violation. With respect to penalties imposed, the GAC publishes the performance review information across all of its sectors. The latest report on the GAC’s website is for 2023 and states that, since its inception, the GAC has received 783 complaints regarding violations of the KSA Competition Law (including 141 new complaints in 2023). The GAC ultimately proceeded with 11 new cases and decided to initiate investigation, research and evidence gathering. In 2023, an undisclosed num - ber of final judgments were issued in favour of the GAC, similar to the GAC’s practice in 2022. Under Article 19 of the KSA Competition Law, final judgments imposed on violators will be published at the violators’ expense. To this end, in its 2023 annual report, the GAC published tables showing the total amount of fines and the sectors in which each vio - lator did business. The top two sectors in violation were gypsum and industrial gases. The total amount of fines collected in 2023 was SAR39,653,222.34, compared to SAR90,566,313.70 in 2022. In terms of economic concentration, the GAC has issued its full-year notification statistics for 2024 and
its first-quarter statistics for 2025. The numbers show the amount of: • economic concentration notifications filed before the GAC; • clearances by the GAC; • no-notification-required decisions; and • notifications under review, among other relevant information. On the one hand, the first quarter of 2025 saw 108 new economic concentration notifications submitted to the GAC, compared with 317 in 2024. The notifications for the first quarter of 2025 resulted in 64 clearances, 32 no-notification-required decisions and 2 conditional clearances. Ten notifications are still being reviewed. On the same track, the GAC’s decisions consisted of 202 clearances and 105 no-notification-required deci - sions. Ten cases are still under review from the first quarter of 2025, compared to only ten notifications still under review by the end of 2024. The percentage breakdown of the 2024 notifications was 81% acquisitions and 15% joint ventures. This was followed by 2% merger notifications, among oth - ers. The first quarter of 2025 has seen a similar pat - tern with 83% acquisitions and 12% joint ventures. This was followed by 3% merger notifications, among others. Regarding economic concentrations involving foreign parties, 80% of notifications in the first quar - ter of 2025 were foreign-party cases, compared with 78.20% in 2024 (including foreign-to-foreign cases). The statistics on first-quarter 2026 economic concen - tration applications are lower than the previous year. The authority received 75 economic concentration applications in the first quarter of 2026, a 31% year- on-year decline from the same period in 2025. This decrease reflects a slowdown in transaction activity, although filings remained at a relatively elevated level in absolute terms, indicating continued deal flow in the Saudi market despite softer momentum. The sectoral distribution of filings shows that activ - ity was concentrated in a handful of core industries. Manufacturing accounted for the largest share of economic concentration applications, followed by the wholesale and retail trade (including motor vehi -
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