No Problem in Fair Trade
The Fair Trade Commission of South Korea gave its final approval of Samsung Electronics’ acquisition of Harman on February 27.
“We informed Samsung Electronics of the fact after determining that the acquisition is unlikely to cause a problem with regard to the Fair Trade Act and restriction of competition,” the commission explained, adding, “The two companies are doing business in separate fields and our decision is basically the same as the European Commission’s decision on the same matter.”
According to the Fair Trade Act, any South Korean company belonging to a large business group that is at least 200 billion won in assets or sales is required to file a report with the Fair Trade Commission and go through its review process for each case of M&A in the country. The commission intercepts the M&A process or takes other necessary measures when it is regarded as restricting competition by resulting in monopoly, oligopoly or the like. Recently, merger between SK and CJ Hello Vision failed for this reason.
Samsung Electronics filed its report regarding Harman in December last year. In the case of international M&A, the report and review mentioned above are applied the same way in each of countries concerned. The European Union recently approved the acquisition of Harman by Samsung Electronics.