UAE Law and Practice Contributed by: Alex Saleh, Asad Ahmad, Khaled Abuorabi and Habiba Wahdan, GLA & Company
of economic concentration, a mandatory merger control filing is therefore not triggered. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) The Competition Law repealed the exemption for SMEs which was contained in Law No 4 of 2012. 1.3 Enforcement Authorities The UAE Competition Legislation specifies that the responsibility for enforcement lies with the Competition Department at the UAE Ministry of Economy (the “Competition Department”). The Competition Department is supervised by the Competition Regulation Committee and is chaired by the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy (the ”Competition Committee”). Both the Competition Committee and the Com - petition Department report to the UAE Federal Minister of Economy (the “Minister”) who heads the UAE Federal Ministry of Economy (the ”Min - istry”). 2. Jurisdiction 2.1 Notification Under the Competition Law, an economic con - centration is realised if the total: • annual sales value of the parties in the rele - vant market during the last fiscal year exceed the amount determined by the UAE Council of Ministers; and • share of the parties exceeds the percentage of the total transactions in the relevant market during the last fiscal year determined by the UAE Council of Ministers. The new Implementing Regulations to the Com - petition Law will establish the:
• guidelines for submitting economic concen - tration applications; • required documents that will be attached to these guidelines; and • mechanisms for examining the application. As these Implementing Regulations have not yet been issued, the Competition Threshold Rules must be adhered to. These rules specify that, economic concentration, such as total or partial alienation, merger or acquisition is realised if the total: • annual sales value of these establishments in the relevant market in the country during the last fiscal year exceeds AED300,000,000; or • share of these establishments exceeds 40% of the total transactions in the relevant market in the country during the last fiscal year. For activities or transactions meeting this thresh - old, filing the notification becomes compulsory. There is no requirement for a voluntary notifica - tion if the threshold is not met otherwise. For the purposes of filing the notification, the fil - ing is made to the Competition Department and attached to it, amongst other things, is an eco - nomic report explaining the positive effect of the exemption required. The Competition Depart - ment will then assess the exemption request and submit a report to the Competition Committee. The Minister of Economy will then decide on the exemption requested within 90 days of notifi - cation of the exemption request. This deadline may be extended by an additional 45 days. If the Minister does not issue their decision by the specified deadline, the notified activity or trans - action will be considered by law to be exempt. On the other hand, no notification is required if the activity or transaction is related to specific
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