General Authority for Competition Receive Record Numbers of Application, in Q4, 2021,

General Authority for Competition announced the figures for the Q4,

2021, regarding applications for economic concentration, as 102 applications were received by the authority.

Of these, 51 applications were met with no objection decisions by the authority, an increase of 34% over the previous quarter of 2021.

The authority receives also reports of economic concentration (mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures), studies them and issues decisions it deems right and appropriate.

It is also concerned with studying the market and sectors, in case of violation of the competition law, or to promote competition, in all sectors.

As many as 51 approvals for concentration operations, during the fourth quarter, have been issued against only one rejection, as the authority has dealt with 39 applications, while 11 applications are still under study.

Acquisition requests obtained the largest share of the total requests for which a letter of no objection was issued, reaching 41 requests out of 51 applications, representing 80%.

While the number of applications for merger were only two, and applications for joint projects stood at 8.

On the other hand, requests from the manufacturing industry topped the requests with 12 applications, representing 23.5% of the total, followed by requests from the information and communications sector at 10, representing 19.6% of the total. .

During 2021, the General Authority for Competition received the largest number of applications, in its history, to study in one year, as the percentage of increase in the number of applications has increased by 115% compared to 2020, Saad Al Masoud, the authority spokesman stated.