Acquisition of portfolios of non-performing loans (NPLs) has been commonplace in Serbia for several years already. And an accompanying issue has been whether such acquisitions need to be filed to the Serbian national competition authority (NCA) for merger examination. Now, the NCA has resolved that issue, by issuing an opinion on the matter.
In 2018 the Serbian NCA examined a record number of mergers. Here are some of the most interesting statistics from this period.
What were the major competition law developments in Macedonia (FYROM) during 2018?
What were the most notable developments during 2018 in the competition law of Bosnia and Herzegovina?
What was new in competition law in Montenegro in the previous year?
Yesterday, I was walking through my former neighborhood Dorćol and saw a grocery I would sometimes go to being renovated. The brand was now different – instead of a local brand ‘Višnjica’ it now read ‘Idea’, which is the brand which Croatian Konzum uses in Serbia. And, as it turned out, that single store was the subject of a merger clearance of the Serbian Competition Commission…
Serbia is well known as a jurisdiction with low merger filing thresholds. In addition to the red tape they create, such low filing thresholds mean that even minor transactions require a careful examination whether a merger filing is required. In a recently published opinion, the Serbian Competition Commission looked at whether aircraft lease amounts to a concentration.