Vertical merger: The CFI confirms the Commission’s decision prohibiting the proposed acquisition of Honeywell by General Electric Company (General Electric)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. – CFI, 14 December 2005, General Electric v Commission, Case T-210/01. The European Commission's ban on General Electric's proposed acquisition of Honeywell on July 3, 2001, had struck a chord. Not only was the Commission prohibiting a major transaction that the US competition authorities had cleared, but also some of the arguments put forward by the Commission to justify its decision (conglomerate effects and vertical integration linked to the transaction) had been widely criticised. In its judgment of 14 December 2005, the Court of First Instance of the European Communities (CFI) ruled that the Commission had not demonstrated the existence of a