Competition Focus

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Welcome to this special edition dedicated to one of our fastest growing regional practices Competition & Antitrust.Contents

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Welcome to this
month’s Law Update

Welcome to this special edition dedicated to one of our fastest growing regional practices Competition & Antitrust.

As a result of the growing number of competition regime changes in the region, the competition authorities of several Arab countries have started collaborating to detect violations in the region. In March 2022, the Arab Competition Network (ACN) was launched in Cairo to coordinate collaboration efforts among the competition authorities of 17 Arab countries namely Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

The existence of such a regional network is promising and it will be interesting to see the role the ACN may play in advocating for a harmonized framework of its members' regulatory practices.

In this issue, our intro article “Surge of Merger Control in the Middle East” takes us through the evolution of the newly revamped competition regimes in the region and what it means to businesses and global deals.

2025 will arguably be the year of competition in the Middle East starting with the UAE just announcing the highly anticipated turnover thresholds for merger filings which is covered in our main article. “Merger Control in the Middle East: A Regional Overview”.

This article sets the stage for our main multijurisdictional piece on all the latest on Merger Control covering 5 jurisdictions to watch namely, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and Jordan.

This edition also covers a major development in Saudi Arabia's competition landscape which is the recent draft amended merger control guidelines released for public comment in July 2024, but which are not yet in force. See “The General Authority for Competition’s draft Amended Merger Review Guidelines: Implementation Expected in 2025”. These forthcoming guidelines represent a significant development for Saudi Arabia’s merger control regime.

We also cover a landmark ruling in Saudi Arabia on price collusion and finish off our Saudi coverage with an article on the investigation and judicial procedures under the Saudi competition law.

We then take you to Egypt, with an insight on the key takeaways from the Egyptian Competition Authority's latest guidelines on Vertical Agreements and conclude our competition coverage with an introduction to Iraq’s competition regime and an overview of anti-dumping in the UAE.

The edition also explores Iraq with interesting articles on Public Procurement Framework and setting up Joint Ventures. We finally close the edition on a topic that is of interest to everyone, “Exclusive Jurisdiction Clauses: To What Extent Are They Applicable Under UAE Law”

We have also prepared a series of engaging podcasts with our regional competition team to discuss all things competition in the Middle East. Stay tuned to hear from the team on their practical insights on what’s to come.

Mariam Sabet
Partner,
Antitrust & Competition