The acquisition was originally notified separately to the national competition authorities of Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. However, the European Commission has interpreted that the transaction constitutes a single concentration and claims exclusive competence over its assessment.
The FCCA was notified on 29 August 2018 of an arrangement whereby Danish Agro Machinery Holding A/S would acquire Konekesko Oy’s agricultural machine, farm machine and groundcare machine business.
The FCCA initiated an in-depth investigation to assess the acquisition on 1 October 2018. Based on the FCCA’s preliminary investigation, the acquisition may have adverse effects on competition in the market of self-propelled forage harvesters, in which the parties’ combined market share is significant. The preliminary investigation by the FCCA also found the companies’ combined market share in the sale of combine harvesters to be relatively high.
The FCCA suspended its investigation and the time limit for reviewing the acquisition on 8 October 2018 after receiving information that the acquisition may fall under the exclusive competence of the Commission. The parties to the acquisition confirmed on 1 February 2019 the withdrawal of the notification of acquisition concerning Finland due to the fact that the transaction will be notified to the European Commission in conjunction with the transactions in the Baltic countries.
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Further information:
Assistant Director Sanna Syrjälä, tel. +358 (0)29 505 3385 firstname.lastname@kkv.fi
According to the Competition Act, the FCCA must be notified of a transaction if the combined turnover of the parties to the corporate transaction exceeds 350 million euros and the turnover from Finland of at least two of the parties exceeds 20 million euros for both. The FCCA will approve a corporate transaction if it has none of the harmful impacts referred to in the Competition Act. The FCCA will intervene in corporate transactions if its investigations suggest that the acquisition substantially impedes effective competition on Finnish markets or a substantial part of the markets, particularly through the creation or reinforcement of a dominant market position. Where necessary, notifications of acquisitions are considered in two stages. The so-called first stage takes a month at most. If the acquisition is clearly not harmful to competition, or if the harmful effects can be prevented by means proposed by the parties to the acquisition, the acquisition is approved during the first stage. If not, the FCCA decides to conduct a further investigation of the matter, during which the acquisition and its competition effects are investigated in further detail.
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