• In 2018, UOKiK granted 228 consents to mergers and acquisitions.
• It is the largest number for 11 years.
• The purpose of concentration control is to protect markets against distortion of competition, such as monopolization.

In the free market economy, entrepreneurs are free to enter into transactions. In most countries, including Poland, there is an exception to this rule, namely concentration control. The largest market players must ask the antitrust authorities for permission before they carry out a merger or make acquisition. This prevents situations where transactions eliminate competition on a given market.

An entrepreneur who will gain too much advantage over competitors or become a monopolist will not have to attract clients, which may result, for example, in higher prices or lower quality of services or products. Therefore, it is necessary for UOKiK to investigate transactions. However, we can only examine the impact of concentration on competition, says the president of UOKiK, Marek Niechciał.

Pursuant to legal regulations, an intention to carry out transactions must be reported to UOKiK if it involves entrepreneurs whose total turnover in the year preceding the notification exceeded the equivalent of EUR 1 billion in the world or EUR 50 million in Poland.

The year 2018 was record-breaking for the Office in terms of the number of cases related to concentration control. UOKiK received 251 applications and issued 229 decisions. 228 of them were consents to transactions, and one was a decision to discontinue the proceedings, says the vice-president of UOKiK, Michał Holeksa.

According to statistics on concentration control of last year:

• In one case UOKiK raised objections to the transaction. This was the case of Air Products taking control over ACP Europe and Eurocylinder.
• In five cases, entrepreneurs withdrew applications for consent to concentration. These applications concerned the acquisition of: Calypso Fitness, Multimedia Polska and Elester-PKP.
• The average time to receive final decision was 41 days.
• In 220 cases, there was no need to prolong the proceedings (the average time was 36 days), and eight decisions required the second phase.
• There are more than 30 proceedings pending, five of them at the second stage.
• The Office gave opinions on 390 cases conducted by the European Commission. The EC asked UOKiK for opinion on the merger of Siemens and Alstom.

The proceedings on concentration are two-stage. The purpose of the first stage, which lasts up to 30 days, is to consider cases that do not raise doubts as to their negative impact on competition. More complicated ones, such as those requiring market research, must be further investigated.

Decisions approving the concentration expire if transaction is not carried out within 2 years of the decision issuance. Information offered by UOKiK website is designed to provide insight into all antitrust proceedings conducted by the Office. For more material about merger guidelines please go to a special report on this subject.

Additional information for the media:

The UOKiK Press Office

Pl. Powstańców Warszawy 1, 00-950 Warsaw
Phone: 695 902 088, 22 55 60 430
E-mail: [SCODE]Yml1cm9wcmFzb3dlQHVva2lrLmdvdi5wbA==[ECODE]

Twitter: @UOKiKgovPL