• Will extend merger review period to three years
• Potentially unlawful, below-threshold mergers could be reviewed
• Authority seeks streamlined coordination on national security reviews

The Mexican competition authority (CNA) intends to review killer acquisitions and has vowed to increase its tech-related sector purview, its President Andrea Marván said.

The competition law amendments approved in October granted the CNA a three-year term to review deals after their completion, instead of the one-year term previously in force, Marván told this news service on the sidelines of the Mexico Digital Summit on 7 October.

Also, the CNA now can investigate mergers and acquisitions that hamper competition conditions, even if their value is below the threshold established by the competition law (currently about USD 104.5mn), Marván said.

In addition to that, the CNA acquired since last year the legal powers to oversee the telecommunications and broadcast media sectors, previously a realm of the now defunct sector authority IFT. This means the competition watchdog is now fully invested in those sectors, she added.

In the first year after its creation, the authority reviewed about 189 mergers; from that pool, about 10% of these procedures were in sectors related to telecommunications, media and technology, Marván said in her prepared remarks. She added that the CNA also issues competition opinions when television and radio licensees transfer their rights to other parties, which occurred in about 50 transactions this year, she said.

The competition watchdog has issued about 20 opinions as to the impact of the entry of competitors in radio spectrum tenders, she said.

The rejection of the Visa/Prosa deal in February is an example of how the CNA will approach technology-sector transactions, she added. One of the outstanding risks from the transaction was the potential elimination of Carnet, a competitor, the authority said at the time.

National security procedure

The CNA will work with the Secretariat of Economy (SE) if a foreign investment law bill submitted in August — which establishes a national security review procedure — is passed. This collaboration is designed to prevent the proposed merger review reform from colliding with the regular merger control procedure, Marván said in the interview.

As the National Commission of Foreign Investment (CNIE) will drive the proposed procedure, and the CNA are the Secretariat of Economy’s decentralized bodies, the idea would be to establish a joint streamlined process to prevent a “double counter” (doble ventanilla) situation in which the same deal would have to be notified twice, Marván said.