SAUDI ARABIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Alex Saleh, Asad Ahmad, Khaled al-Khashab and Shahad Al-Humaidani, GLA & Company
• If the establishment was engaged in several activities where each activity differed from the other, 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 violation; (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 provid - ed on the GAC’s website is for 2023 and details that the GAC, since its inception, received 783 complaints in regard to violations of the KSA Competition Law (including 141 new complaints for 2023). The GAC ultimately proceeded with 11 new cases and decided to initiate investiga - tion, research and evidence gathering. In 2023, an undisclosed number 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, the final judgments implemented against vio - lators will be published at the expense of the violators. To this end, in its 2023 annual report, the GAC published tables of the total amount of fines and the sectors each violator did business in. The top two violating sectors were gypsum and industrial gases. The total amount of fines collected was SAR39,653,222.34 for 2023 com - pared to SAR90,566,313.70 in 2022. In terms of economic concentration, the GAC has issued its full year-round statistics of noti - fications for 2024 and the statistics for the first quarter of 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 rel - evant information. On one hand, the first quarter of 2025 saw 108 new economic concentration notifications sub - mitted to the GAC, as opposed to a total of 317 notifications in 2024. The notifications for the first quarter of 2025 ended in 64 clearances, 32 no-notification-required decisions and two 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 decisions. 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 notifi - cations were 81% acquisitions and 15% joint ventures. This was followed by 2% merger noti - fications, among others. The first quarter of 2025 has seen a similar pattern with 83% acquisitions and 12% joint ventures. This was followed by 3% merger notifications, among others. Regard - ing economic concentrations involving foreign parties, 80% of the notifications involved foreign parties in the first quarter of 2025, as opposed to a total of 78.20% of the notifications in 2024 (foreign-to-foreign and a foreign party included). In terms of economic concentration-related vio - lations, the GAC has imposed its first fine since October 2020. The fine was imposed on an enti - ty for failing to notify an economic concentration in 2024. This is the second time this type of fine has been imposed since the Competition Law was implemented. The fine was issued against Panda Retail Company and Atabat Al-Bab Tel -
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