Merger Control in Chile: Challenges and Responses from an Emerging Regime

Francisca Levin V. Abogada de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, LL.M en Derecho de la Competencia, King’s College London y MSc en Regulación, London School of Economics. Socia de Derecho de la Competencia en Cuatrecasas y ex Jefa de la División de Fusiones de la Fiscalía Nacional Económica en Chile. Académica en posgrados de Libre Competencia en la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez y Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Summary: This essay seeks to analyze some of the most relevant questions—procedural, legal, and/or economic—that have arisen in Chile in the field of preventive merger control, from its inception in June 2017 to the present. It also examines the solutions or responses that the competition law institutions—the National Economic Prosecutor’s Office (“FNE”), the Tribunal for the Defense of Free Competition (“TDLC”), and the Supreme Court (“Corte Suprema”)—have offered to address these issues.

Although this work focuses primarily on the Chilean system, it becomes evident that most of these questions do not necessarily follow a local logic. On the contrary, as is demonstrated, the concerns of participants in merger control regimes converge across the region and are being raised in other competition law jurisdictions with which Chile shares institutional design and analytical standards, such as Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador. Many of their criteria are also analyzed in contrast with those developed in Chile.

«the path undertaken seems to lead to the consolidation of a predictable and technical regime, effective in analyzing and intervening in depth in the face of problematic concentrations, and at the same time, capable of clearing, with the speed required by businesses, the transactions that are harmless to competition«