Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST NEWS: EC closes infringement proceedings against Munksjö and Ahlstrom over merger investigation disclosures, (Oct 29, 2014)

The European Commission (EC) has closed proceedings for a suspected infringement of the rules concerning the provision of information to the EC for merger control purposes against Ahlstrom Corporation, Munksjö Oyi, both of Finland, and Munksjö AB of Sweden.

In December 2012, the EC opened an investigation into the proposed creation of company, combining Munksjö and Ahlstrom’s label and processing business. The combination has since been completed.

During the merger investigation, the EC identified significant discrepancies between the companies' market share estimates for abrasive paper backings and its heavy-weight segment as submitted in the merger notification file and the companies' pre-existing internal documents. The EC questioned whether the information provided to it by the parties was incorrect or misleading.

The parties provided contemporaneous evidence explaining the discrepancies between the estimates provided to the EC and the parties' internal documents. The companies demonstrated valid reasons to reassess their internal market estimates shortly before the notification. The parties provided documents showing that they had carried out a market reconstruction exercise for the purposes of the notification and this exercise led them to reconsider the significance of competitors, including a number of Asian players. For this reason, they had corrected their internal market estimates accordingly, the EC explained in an October 29 announcement.

Companies: Ahlstrom Corp.; Munksjö Oyi; Munksjö AB

News: AcquisitionsMergers Antitrust