UAE Law and Practice Contributed by: Alex Saleh, Asad Ahmad, Khaled Abu Orabi and Khaled al-Khashab, GLA & Company
• for an acquisition, the application is filed by the acquiring undertaking, as buyer or by its duly authorised legal representative; and • for a merger or joint venture, the application is filed by all relevant parties or by an undertaking author - ised by them under a duly certified special power of attorney. This allocation is more specific than the former gen - eral reference to the relevant “undertaking”. 3.5 Information Included in a Filing Cabinet Resolution No 59 of 2026 now sets out the principal information and supporting documents to be included in an economic concentration filing, includ - ing the following: • the application form prepared by the Ministry for this purpose; • copies of the constitutional documents, commer - cial licences and the contract or agreement relating to the economic concentration; • audited financial statements for the last three finan - cial years for each party and their branches; • names of founders, partners or shareholders of each party and their ownership percentages, together with the parties’ headquarters and branches and their capital contributions; • evidence of payment of the filing fee; and • an economic report covering the relevant market study for the last three financial years, competitors and their UAE sales and market shares, custom - ers and dealing shares, affected markets, positive effects and proposed commitments, effects on prices, quality and availability for consumers, geo - graphic scope and related transactions completed in the previous three years. The application may be submitted in Arabic or English by an electronically signed copy from a legal repre - sentative under a duly certified special power of attor - ney. Data and documents may be submitted in the language in which they were prepared, with an Arabic or English translation if they were prepared in another language. Undertakings wishing to treat application data or documents as confidential must mark them “confi -
dential” and submit non-confidential summaries that allow the confidential content to be understood suf - ficiently. Additional documents and information may also be requested by the authority during the merger control review process. 3.6 Penalties/Consequences of Incomplete or Inaccurate Notification The new Competition Regulations impose a formal examination stage: the authority examines the appli - cation and supporting documents within ten busi - ness days, extendable by a similar period and issues a notice confirming completion of the formal review. If the required documents are incomplete or the information is insufficient, the authority may request additional documents within a period it specifies, not exceeding ten business days from notification. Sub - stantive review should not proceed until the applica - tion has passed formal review. Penalties/Consequences of Inaccurate or Misleading Information There is no regulatory limitation or threshold on the number of requests that the authority may make during its review of the documents and information required for reviewing the notification. The authority may request additional documents when the filing materials are incomplete or insufficient and may request necessary data, information and docu - ments from the parties and interested parties during monitoring and evaluation. The statutory review timeline should therefore be managed around completeness of the filing and the authority’s information requests. There is no clarity on how common or burdensome some of these requests could be. However, in prac - tice, it is highly likely that it is reasonable and essential to assess the notification adequately and accurately. 3.7 Review Process Cabinet Resolution No 59 of 2026 now sets out the review process. After formal review, the authority undertakes a substantive assessment of the applica - tion to evaluate the positive or negative effect of the
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