Directive set to deliver boost to merger markets

Date: 08/05/03

THE flagging mergers and acquisitions market could soon be given a boost by a long-awaited EU directive designed to slash red tape in cross-border deals.

Frits Bolkestein, the internal market commissioner, has confirmed that the Commission will soon dust off the tenth company law directive on mergers - blocked 16 years ago by MEPs.

The Dutchman told deputies he hopes to unveil the draft directive later this year - one of a raft of proposals due to be flagged in a Commission paper on European company law later this month.

Notifications to the Commission's competition department are well down on the peak levels of 2000, when 335 deals affecting EU trade were struck.

Last year only 277 were notified, and figures for the first three months of this year show a further slowdown.

But Bolkestein's aides predict the directive will encourage more deals because it will wipe out a series of legal obstacles faced by companies.

These can delay merger completions for months and add millions of euro to fees, in some cases even deterring investors or managers from going ahead in the first place.

For example, it will remove legal barriers to winding-up the "dead companies" left when activities are subsumed into just one of the merged parties.

Jérôme Chauvin, director of company affairs at EU employers' group UNICE, said: "This is very important. It's a key piece of the jigsaw holding up the creation of the internal market."

The merger law covers uncontested deals involving firms from more than one member state.

The flagging mergers and acquisitions market could soon be given a boost by a long-awaited EU directive designed to slash red tape in cross-border deals.