Competition and Distribution

Across the past few years, competition law and policy have been enforced by Egypt’s regulators, on one hand by monitoring the markets and the companies’ practices with the aim to guarantee a good economic environment, which has resulted in the strict enforcement and implementation of the competition law rules by the Egyptian Competition Authority (“ECA”) to protect local markets from anticompetitive behaviors and regulating the competition process.

Our Competition and Distribution team includes former officials from the ECA who have the experience to provide our clients with high-quality services. These include complex local and cross-border mergers and acquisitions clearance, competition investigations and dawn raids, competition and intellectual property interface, legal opinions, competition litigation, and competition compliance programs.

The Competition and Distribution Team handles leading-edge competition matters on Egyptian, European, and MENA region competition issues, including and not limited to:

 

Mergers and Acquisitions clearance and approvals

As of 2022, the new merger control regime entered into force, which gives the ECA the right to approve, block, or impose remedies to any local or cross-border transaction before its closing.

Our team has comprehensive experience in merger clearance such as the early analysis of potential competition issues and engagement with regulators to obtain the required approvals efficiently and smoothly for complex transactions.

 

Cartels, abuse of dominant position, and vertical restraints investigations

The Egyptian government aims to guarantee a good economic environment, which has resulted in the strict enforcement and implementation of the competition law rules to protect local markets from anticompetitive behaviors.

We have successfully represented our clients in connection to many competition investigations before the ECA, whether by closing the investigation without filing any charges to our clients or by settling with the ECA. Moreover, we have successfully secured full immunity “Leniency” for more than EGP 5 billion fine to one of our clients working in the pharmaceutical sector.

 

Distribution

Our team has the technical expertise to advise our clients regarding their distribution agreements, policy, and commercial and sales strategies to ensure full alignment with the competition law rules and regulations.

 

Dawn-raids

Unannounced inspections or dawn raids by the ECA require a rapid and coordinated response. Our team assists the firm’s clients in connection with dawn raids, ensuring a rapid and efficient response to them as well as protecting their rights in any competition investigation conducted by the ECA.

 

Compliance programs

Understanding and raising awareness of the competition law rules and policies leads to minimizing the risk for the companies of being involved in a competition investigation or being in breach of the competition law.

Our team provides clients with competition law compliance programs and training with the purpose of ensuring that their policies and business plans are in compliance with the competition law rules, as well as assisting our clients to achieve their business goals while reducing the risk of breaching the competition law.

We have presented training programs on the competition law rules and policies for our clients across a broad range of industry sectors including food and agricultural, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, and automotive.

 

Private competition litigation

Our team combines technical expertise with strategic advice to pursue or defend competition-related claims on behalf of our clients before Egyptian national courts, as well as advising our clients on complex procedural and substantive issues arising in the context of criminal and civil investigations and dawn raids conducted by the ECA.

Matters Highlights:

• Representing multinational companies before the ECA to obtain all the required clearance to insure smooth closing of the transaction.
• Representing Aeolus Tyres before ECA and COMESA for the purpose of obtaining clearance regarding the global structuring of Pirelli.
• Representing Clients during investigations before ECA and Public Prosecutor.
• Conducting full fledge mock-up down raids for local and multinational companies.
• Successfully executing the first leniency case before the ECA and ensuring the full protection of our client from an EGP 5 billion fine.
• Acting as legal counsel of the Egyptian Cement Association to handle all the legal areas facing the cement industry in Egypt and specifically full compliance with competition law.
• Acting as legal counsel of the Egyptian Cement Association before the ECA for the purpose of obtaining the exemption from the horizontal agreement “Cartels” ban regarding the reduction of cement companies’ production capacity.
• Providing competition compliance programs for local and multinationals such as Vodafone, Philip Morris, Lesaffre Egypt, and Titan Egypt to ensure full compliance with competition law.
• Assisting our clients such as Intercement, Pirelli, Philip Morris, Ezz Elarab, Vodafone, and Lesaffre Egypt in setting their commercial/sales policies and guidelines to be aligned with the competition law rules and policy.
• Assisting and preparing a legal memo for AlSafwa Cement one of the biggest Saudi Cement companies in relation to a matter before the General Authority for Competition in KSA.