PCC to release revised rules on mergers and acquisitions within the month

The Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) is set to release revised rules for mergers and acquisitions that require its regulatory approval, to ensure that such transactions will not result in an anti-competitive business environment.

"The merger procedures are being finalized," PCC Commissioner Johannes Bernabe told reporters in a roundtable discussion in Pasig City on Wednesday.

"I believe within the next week or two we can finalize it and maybe before the end of the month it will be published in newspapers and it will become effective 15 days after," he added.

Bernabe took note that the key revision on the rules on mergers and acquisitions is the time when parties are required to notify the anti-trust body.

"The proposed change is to allow the parties to file within 30 days from the execution of a definitive agreement," he said.

Under the current rules and regulations of the PCC, mergers and acquisitions above P1 billion are required to notify the PCC before an initial or definitive agreement was signed to allow the anti-trust body to review if such deals are anti-competitive.

"We are revising it because some parties are saying that if they have foreign partners and the foreign partners are very keen to expedite the process of closing a deal, sometimes they're not able do that because the local parties have to advise them that they have to comply with the PCC requirement of notifying before the execution," the PCC official said.

"To avoid that situation, that we are getting in the way of executing an agreement... okay, you can file it within 30 days as long as you don't commit acts of consummation of the transactions," he added.

Among the acts of consummation cited by the PCC official are the appointing of directors for a joint venture company or when the parties already signed deeds of sales of certain amounts of shares for the acquisition or merger.

"That is already an act of consummation if meron ng bayaran," Bernabe said.

"If we allow that, it will be harder to unscramble the deal. What if later on, we say, 'you're transaction was anti-competitive.' It will be very difficult for us and for the parties as well," Bernabe said. —KBK, GMA News