Like most competition law regimes around the world,
Malaysia's Competition Act 2010 contains provisions prohibiting
anti-competitive practices and abuses of dominance. However, it
does not currently include the third "pillar" of
competition law that is common to many other regimes, namely, cross
sector merger control rules. Such rules enable competition
authorities to review transactions and to "step in" if an
authority has concerns that a particular transaction could be
harmful to competition.
Although the introduction of a merger control regime in Malaysia
has been discussed for many years, it was not until 2018 that plans
began to gain traction. At this time, numerous authorities in South
East Asia were monitoring the high profile Uber/Grab transaction,
which resulted in Uber exiting the market. Although concerns were
raised in several jurisdictions (including Malaysia), the Malaysian
Competition Commission's (MyCC) powers were
restricted to ex post conduct of
