Springtime comes to German merger filings...

German merger control jurisdictional thresholds revised

Recent changes to German competition law have heralded in Spring for corporate and antitrust lawyers engaged in multi-jurisdictional mergers.

The German merger regime has long presented a thorn in the flesh of lawyers engaged in so-called "foreign-to-foreign mergers" affecting German territory. The rules operated whereby if only one party to a transaction were to have a worldwide annual turnover of more than EUR 500 million and more than EUR 25 million in Germany, the mandatory notification requirement of the transaction would nonetheless be engaged even where the other party had minor activities only in Germany.

Read Wragge & Co's analysis of these changes for more background.