On January 24, 2024, the Secretary of Trade (the “Antitrust Authority”) published Resolution No. 48/2024 whereby the value of the administrative unit created as a reference by the Antitrust Law, has been increased from ARS 162.55 to ARS 506.19,thereby updating both the merger control notification thresholds and the monetary penalties set forth in the Antitrust Law.
Pursuant to the Antitrust Law, both the merger control notification thresholds and the monetary penalties are expressed in administrative units, which shall be updated on a yearly basis by the Antitrust Authority following the evolution of the official consumer price index.
The increase of the administrative unit’s value has an impact in both the merger control thresholds and the monetary penalties established in the Antitrust Law. The main resulting modifications are summarized below:
Updated Merger Control Thresholds
Economic concentrations must be notified to the Antitrust Authority if the combined Argentine annual net sales of the acquiring group and the target group exceed ARS 50,619 million during the preceding year (approx. USD 61.1 million taking in consideration the exchange rate in force on December 31, 2023).
Additionally, the de minimis exemption was updated, and now otherwise mandatory economic concentrations are exempted from notification if both the price of the Argentine portion of the transaction and the value of the assets to be transferred in Argentina are below ARS 10,123 million (approx. USD 12 million at the current exchange rate), unless where the acquiring economic group was involved in one or more economic concentrations in the same market in Argentina, which together with the economic concentration under consideration, are all jointly valued in ARS 10,123 million (approx. USD 12 million at the current exchange rate) during the preceding 12-month period or ARS 30,371 million (approx. USD 36 million at the current exchange rate) during the preceding 36-month period.
Updated Monetary Penalties
Fines for anticompetitive conducts, when these cannot be calculated using the 30% Argentine turnover or the illicit gain tests provided in the Antitrust Law, cannot exceed ARS 101,238 million (approx. USD 120.2 million at the current exchange rate).
Daily fines for breach of cease-and-desist orders, late filing and gun-jumping practices,when these cannot be calculated by means of using the turnover test set forth in the Antitrust Law, can now amount to ARS 379.6 million (approx. USD 451,000 at the current exchange rate).
Bill to Amend the Antitrust Law
As informed in our news alert dated December 28, 2023 (available here: https://allende.com/en/economic-deregulation/bill-for-the-enactment-of-a-new-antitrust-law-12-28-2023/), Congress is discussing the implementation of a new antitrust law. Among the modifications the bill seeks to introduce is an increase of the merger control notification thresholds. If the bill is passed into law by Congress, new notification thresholds will be in place.
