Aaron Chen & Sally Yang
The Fair Trade Commission (“FTC”) issued a press release on June 28, 2021 in which it announced that starting from July 1, 2021, the FTC will provide a way for applicants to inquire online the status of the FTC’s review of a merger application. The FTC will disclose on its online system to the inquiring merger participant information such as the date the merger application was received, the request(s) for supplemental information, the receipt of the requested supplemental information, the processing of the application, the requests for outside opinions and comments, the review of the application at the FTC Commissioners’ Meeting, and the end dates of all types of waiting periods.
Even though the progress of the merger application’s review affects the planning and timing of a merger, it was often hard for applicants in the past to timely find out the progress of the FTC’s review of their merger application. Soon after becoming the Chairperson on February 1, 2021, FTC Chairperson Mei Li announced that she will be making improvements to all of the FTC’s administrative procedures, as well as the specific establishment of a “Merger Work Committee”. The FTC’s implementation of an online inquiry system that enables merger participants to find out at any time the current progress of the merger application review should prove to be useful to the transparency and predictability of the procedure.