Thought Articles

The article appeared in the In-House Lawyer magazine, March 2008. The Romanian M&A market is characterised by constant growth, in line with that of the country’s economy. Milestones of the market in recent years include: UK-based Vodafone’s acquisition of a 79% share stake in the mobile operator MobiFon SA, pursuant to a $3.5bn transaction in 2005, which also included a 100% share stake in the Czech mobile operator Oskar Mobil; the privatisation of Banca Comerciala Romana SA, Romania’s largest commercial bank, following a €3.75bn offer from Austrian Erste Bank AG in 2006; and the acquisition of Rompetrol SA, a large Romanian petrol producer and retailer, by the Kazakh state-owned company KazMunaiGaz, in a $2.7bn transaction in 2007.

Reproduced with permission from Law Business Research. This article was first published in Getting the Deal Through: Dominance 2008, published in February 2008 – contributing editors Thomas Janssens and Thomas Wessely. The abusive behaviour of dominant firms is prohibited by article 6 of the Romanian Competition Law No. 21/1996 (RCL) and, since 1 January 2007, by article 82 of the EC Treaty. Article 6 expressly forbids the abusive use of a dominant position held by one or more undertakings on the Romanian market or on a substantial part of it, by resorting to anti-competitive practices that have as their object or may have as their effect the distortion of economic activities or the prejudice of consumers.

This chapter was first published in the PLC Cross-border Competition Volume 2: Leniency Handbook 2007/08 and is reproduced with the permission of the publisher, Practical Law Company. The Competition Council, Romania’s anti-trust regulatory authority, introduced a leniency policy in 2004 (see box, The regulatory authority). The Competition Council published its Guidelines on Leniency (Leniency Guidelines) on 13 May 2004. These were inspired by the European Commission’s 2002 Notice on immunity from fines and reduction of fines in cartel cases (OJ 2002C45/03) (Leniency Notice).

Romania is a young market economy and the general economic and legislative environment has significantly changed in recent years. The Romanian capital market is equally young and is currently undergoing an upgrading process from an incipient market to a highly regulated and complex one, by implementing the EU principles.

This chapter was first published in the PLC Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions Handbook 2007/08 and is reproduced with the permission of the publisher, Practical Law Company. Romania is a young market economy and the economic and legislative environments have recently been exposed to signifi cant changes. Since important investors are still in the process of establishing new enterprises and multinational corporations are just starting to stabilise and solidify their operations in Romania, in practical terms, takeovers are only just beginning. Nevertheless from a legal perspective, public M&A activity is regulated in significant detail under the general corporate and special capital markets legislation.

This article appeared in the 2007 edition of The International Comparative Legal Guide to: Telecommunication Laws and Regulations 2008; published and reproduced with kind permission by Global Legal Group Ltd, London. Romania first issued the legislative acts allowing the liberalised provision of several telecommunications services in 1990, as part of the transition to market economy. The country has implemented the current EU regulatory framework in the electronic communications sector. However, the European Commission has sent a letter of formal notice for non-communication of transposition measures as regards the Universal Service Directive.