Ricardo Bordalo Junqueiro (partner) pens an opinion piece for Jornal Económico entitled “Company mergers: a dangerous reform”, in which he analyses the new criteria for mandatory notification of merger transactions, promoted by the European Commission in light of the fact that several potentially relevant transactions were failing to comply with European notification criteria and were thus evading the Commission’s scrutiny.

“The European Commission (EC) has just taught us a lesson on how not to solve a problem. After facing opposition to its proposals presented for public consultation, the EC not very subtly extended its competence to analyse merger transactions. Although there are always solid arguments in favour and against such an extension, the main problem was how the EC went about it. It changed rules in the wrong way, introducing inefficiency into the system and increasing (in certain cases, greatly) uncertainty for companies.”

Read the article here.