Evaluating public interest considerations in South African merger enforcement: an overview of the last decade

Anton van Wyk, Anmar Pretorius and Derick Blaauw

Studies in Economics and Econometrics, 2023, vol. 47, issue 4, 374-391

Abstract: In literature, most studies on mergers focus purely on competition-related aspects; additional conditions that can apply are labelled non-competition goals or public interest considerations (PICs). The imposition of these conditions is garnering more attention from the competition authorities as a means to assist the struggling economy in South Africa. This paper reports the impact that various independent variables can have on the probability of certain public interest considerations being imposed on merger cases in South Africa with the use of a quantitative logit regression model. The study sample consists of 221 mergers between 2010 and 2019, and only includes cases with PICs as conditions to merge, based on all small, intermediate, and large mergers collected from Competition Commission and Tribunal newsletters, case files and company websites, as well as the Institute for Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances. This research makes use of descriptive statistics and regression analysis from this unique database to analyse the data. The results indicate that for South Africa, the competition authorities focus on employment, supplier development fund programmes and Black economic empowerment conditions when considering which PIC to enforce on merger cases. The article contributes to the literature on competition policy and economics by adding to the minimal research already conducted and enhances our understanding of mergers with non-competition goals and the impact of these considerations in the South African merger framework.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03796205.2023.2252185 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rseexx:v:47:y:2023:i:4:p:374-391

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rsee20

DOI: 10.1080/03796205.2023.2252185

Access Statistics for this article

Studies in Economics and Econometrics is currently edited by Willem Bester

More articles in Studies in Economics and Econometrics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().