Notification strategies are proving crucial in obtaining competition approval in international deals, according to a panel at the International Bar Association’s M&A conference last week.
Attorneys must take note of jurisdictional differences and modify their strategies accordingly.
Antitrust approval can differ as a result of an individual jurisdiction’s market distribution, as a failed NYSE Euronext deal showed last year. In that deal, the US Justice Department threatened to block a joint bid by Nasdaq and IntercontinentalExchange. It did not threaten to block a deal with rival bidder Deutshe Börse, though.
Panelist Christine Varney, a partner at Cravath Swaine & Moore who served as the US Assistant Attorney General for...