By Susan Ning and Huang Jing

On 21 September 2011, Mr. Shang Ming, Director General of MOFCOM’s Anti-Monopoly Bureau revealed the yearly merger control statistics at the BRICS International Competition Conference 2011 held in Beijing.

According to Mr. Shang, the merger control statistics for 2008, 2009 and 2010 are as follows: 

     Case numbers
 		  
  Year Cleared without conditions  Cleared with conditions 

Rejected
 
2008                           16                          1         0
2009                           75                         4        1
2010                           116                         1        0

 

As of August 2011, the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of MOFCOM has received 142 merger control filings, among which 118 were officially accepted and only 1 was approved with conditions (see our article entitled The Russian Potash Deal – first conditional clearance of 2011). It was expected that more than 200 mergers will be reviewed in 2011.

Comment

The number of merger control notifications has been steadily rising since the Anti-monopoly Law is enacted in August 2008.  One of the major reasons for the increase is that more and more companies doing business in China are becoming aware of the merger control regime in China and start to acknowledge the potential influence of MOFCOM in international commercial transactions.