The German Federal Ministry of Economics proposes a transaction value threshold to require notification of high value deals even with no or de minimis sales in Germany

Germany proposes transaction value threshold to require notification of high value deals even with no / de minimis sales in Germany* With little fanfare, on Friday, 1 July 2016, among a raft of other amendments to the Act against Restraint of Competition (‘ARC’; 9th amendment), the Federal Ministry of Economics proposed a far reaching change to German merger notification thresholds making it one of the few jurisdictions worldwide that take jurisdiction based on the size of the transaction, no matter how trivial the sales of the target are in Germany. The policy intention was explicitly to bring into the Bundeskartellamt’s net major deals – struck anywhere in the world – with a high value target whose potential in sales is as yet unrealized. This will often be the case with innovative