FCO Publishes Draft Guidelines on Domestic Effects in German Merger Control

On December 5, 2013, the German Federal Cartel Office (“FCO”) published a draft set of guidelines on domestic effects in merger control (the “Draft Guidelines”). The Draft Guidelines seek to provide guidance on which transactions should be considered to produce domestic effects and therefore require pre-merger filing, and which do not. In doing so, they (1) identify transactions that the FCO considers clearly have domestic effects, (2) identify transactions that the FCO considers clearly do not have domestic effects, and (3) provide general guidance for the case-by-case analysis required in all other cases. The Draft Guidelines also discuss some practical considerations, and suggest that filing a precautionary notification may be more efficient in cases that do not raise substantive issues, than trying to resolve the often more complex issue of domestic effects.