By Jet Damazo-Santos ( July 24, 2024, 08:36 GMT | Insight) -- The Philippine antitrust regulator is looking into potentially imposing different mandatory-notification thresholds for deals in different sectors, its chairman told a conference today. “We are studying sector-specific thresholds,” said Michael Aguinaldo, the chair of the Philippine Competition Commission. “We are trying to look into whether that would be appropriate for our jurisdiction.” Currently, mergers and acquisitions exceeding 7.8 billion pesos in terms of size of party and 3.2 billion pesos for size of transaction have to be notified to the PCC for mandatory review, regardless of sector. The Philippine antitrust regulator is looking into potentially imposing different mandatory-notification thresholds for deals in different sectors, its chairman told a conference* today. “We are studying sector-specific thresholds,” said Michael Aguinaldo, the chair of the Philippine Competition Commission, or PCC. “We are trying to look into whether that would be appropriate for our jurisdiction.” Currently, mergers and acquisitions exceeding 7.8 billion pesos ($133 million) in terms of size of party and 3.2 billion pesos for size of transaction have to be notified to the PCC for mandatory review, regardless of sector (see here). The PCC adjusts its merger thresholds annually based on nominal GDP growth. Within Southeast Asia, Vietnam has higher notification thresholds for insurance and securities firms (see here). In Thailand, while the competition regulator applies the same threshold for deals under its purview, transactions covered by sector-specific regulators follow different thresholds. The Philippines has an active merger-review regime that has blocked and imposed conditions on anticompetitive deals before. Earlier this month, the PCC published its guidelines on merger remedies, outlining its approach to assessing proposed behavioral or structural solutions to competition concerns (see here). Elaborating on this, Aguinaldo said that while structural remedies are ideal, “they're very difficult to design and you also don't want to stifle business as well.” Behavioral remedies, on the other hand, while easier to design, require significant efforts to monitor and have other limitations, he said. “To give you a very precise example, we actually have a case where we imposed certain commitments to the transaction. They violated it, we imposed the fine, and they went to the court and got a restraining order. So while that restraining order is in effect, we cannot fine them, but they continue to violate the commitments,” Aguinaldo said. While these guidelines are not “hard and fast” rules, the antitrust chief said they’re designed to increase transparency and inform businesses of what the PCC is looking for. “If you tie it up with a pre-notification consultation, it can actually work well, because [companies] can already ask questions based on these guidelines,” he said. “We don't want to be like a black box [where] we don't reveal to them how we how we process things, how we think, and all that. We're trying to be more open about it.”...