Update On COMESA's New Merger Control Regime

As reported in our briefing COMESA's Competition Commission commences operations the COMESA Competition Commission (CCC) has started to enforce its competition rules and to accept merger control filings since 14 January 2013 for the 19 eastern and southern African states that are members of COMESA. In the two weeks since enforcement has commenced, there have been significant developments in relation to the following issues:

• the nature of the CCC's jurisdiction over transactions with a regional dimension and whether national authorities will retain parallel jurisdiction;
• the question whether COMESA's merger control regime is suspensive;
• the CCC's intentions regarding the calculation of merger filing fees.