CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF REGULATIONS UNDER COMPETITION LAW ON MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS: A COMPARISON OF THE INDIA, EU, US AND UK LAWS

Abstract

The age of free market economy that we live in currently has large business entities engaging in competitive practices. Monopolisation of market is seen to be the most common result leading to distortion of market. Such distortion is said to be caused due to transactions between business entities like the practice of anti-competitive agreements, abuse of dominance, mergers and takeovers. The major economies of the world have well developed and suited competition regimes in place with the sole purpose of protecting their individual free market economies resulting in the metamorphosis of the economic structure into the demand and supply based model in facilitating allocation of resources.

Laws in India addressing this problem have been under-developed till the rather recent enactment of the Competition Act of 2002. The current Indian Act is contemporary to the laws in force in EU and US. However, there exists a wide-lacunae in the Indian laws on competition related to combinations. This enactment is opined to have projected a paradigm shift in the Indian anti-trust laws by proposing liberalization as the main strategy to open up its markets and mitigate controls from how it previously was as a closed economy. This paper attempts to provide a detailed and comparative analysis of the competition regimes in India, EU, US and UK, and highlight the peculiar implications of corporate combinations and restructuring, the corporate entities are often seen to resort to in this age of competitive growth and innovation. The author through this paper also attempts to elucidate the importance of certain changes and effects thereof, in the changing landscapes of competition policies in different jurisdictions, due to innovative practices in achieving the required corporate structure. This paper is an effort to provide a comparative analysis of the legislative intent and object of enforcement of Indian, EU, US and UK competition regimes on combinations.