Antitrust/International Law: Canadian Competition Bureau Plans Consultations on Revising Merger Enforcement Guidelines

On September 7, the Canadian Competition Bureau announced that "it will hold a series of roundtables to explore the merits of revising the Merger Enforcement Guidelines." Those Guidelines, which were issued in 2004, set out the framework that the Competition Bureau uses to evaluate the potential competitive effects of mergers. The announcement also stated that "[t]he purpose of the roundtables will be to assess whether the guidelines accurately reflect current merger review practices at the Bureau and the potential impact of the recent publication of the revised Horizontal Merger Guidelines by the antitrust authorities in the United States, as well as other legal and economic developments." This announcement follows closely on the heels of the recent issuance of revised merger guidelines by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. (See the August 19 N&C post for details.)