The US FTC and EU Commission struggle to balance the need for business and the practical challenges for mergers during the COVID-19 outbreak

COVID-19 is impacting all sectors of the economy and society, and merger review is no exception. Competition authorities are struggling to balance the need for business continuity and compliance with administrative deadlines on the one hand, with a variety of practical challenges on the other. There are concerns that competition authorities conducting market investigations may not get (sufficient) responses from market participants within tight statutory deadlines. Moreover, the IT infrastructure of many competition authorities does not support remote access to certain types of case information, and we have heard of serious IT issues as an unprecedented number of officials are forced to work from home. This has led to a range of approaches across jurisdictions with some regions – and,