CCI, to provide greater clarity and simplification in M&A, and making regulations more investor friendly, has amended Combination Regulations (sixth time) vide notification dated 9.10.2018.

The Amendments include:

• Allowing withdrawal and refilling of a merger notification, before CCI issues a show cause notice under S. 29(1) of the Act without paying any additional fees.
• Clarification to modifications to combinations, i.e. the parties may offer modifications to proposed combinations even after the show cause notice is issued.
• Clarification to certain time periods, i.e. time taken by parties to provide additional information, remove defects from filing, provide additional details in an incomplete notification, etc. will be excluded from 210-day timeline under S. 6(2A).
• Clarification to oversee implementation of modifications to proposed combination by appointed agencies in case of supervision.

Earlier, in its working draft, CCI had proposed to amend Schedule I, which exempts certain minority acquisitions made solely as investment from being notified to CCI. It had suggested that such acquisitions involving existence of common shareholding (including non-controlling) in competing or vertically linked entities would have to be notified.

However, after receiving comments from stakeholders, the above proposal was not included in the above amendment.

For more: https://www.cci.gov.in/sites/default/files/whats_newdocument/Comb.%20Amend%20Regl.2018.pdf