To File or Not to File: The Treatment of Offshore Joint Ventures Under the EU and China's Merger Control Regimes

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

Angela Huyue Zhang & Mark Jephcott (Herbert Smith) have written on To File or Not to File: The Treatment of Offshore Joint Ventures Under the EU and China's Merger Control Regimes.

ABSTRACT: Joint ventures ("JV") encompass a broad range of commercial operations. The creation and operation of a JV can be subject to competition scrutiny in every jurisdiction that it affects, and in some cases, even those jurisdictions that are not obviously affected by the creation of the JV. A common question for parties to an international JV transaction is whether the JV needs to have a sufficient "nexus" to the jurisdiction in question for the transaction to fall within its merger control regime. This note focuses on the merger regulations of the European Union and China, and their potential extraterritorial jurisdiction over newly created offshore JVs.