Page 37 - FAIR TRADE COMMISSION 2022 Annual Report

Important Work Achievements in 2022 3. Controlling Mergers to Upgrade Quality and Efficiency (1) Merger review enhancement Business mergers can help reduce production costs, upgrade production efficiency and promote innovation and development to cope with challenges from market competition. However, mergers of large corporations may involve concentration of economic power and are likely to lead to competition restraints. Therefore, it is stipulated in the Fair Trade Act that business mergers achieving a certain scale have to be filed in advance. The FTC reviews such cases and, after all the documents are presented, makes the approval or objection decision within 30 working days. In 2022, the FTC received 74 merger filings and closed 69 cases (including unclosed cases from the previous year). 22 of the mergers were approved. As for the remaining 47 cases, 32 of them did not belong to the jurisdiction of the FTC and the others either did not need to be filed or were not presented with all the required documents and the review was suspended as a result. The important merger cases the FTC processed in 2022 included Great Wall Enterprise Co. Ltd. merging with other businesses without filing in advance according to law, Taiwan Mobile belatedly filing its investment in newly-founded Prosperous Living Co., Ltd., the merger between PX Mart and RT-Mart, the merger of eTreego, Hotai Motors and other companies, and the acquisition of Italian company CAS by Walsin Lihwa Corp. Statistics on Mergers in 2022 Unit: case Year Cases Reviewed Results Unclosed at the end of this year Cases unclosed at the end of previous year Cases of appli- cation Total Mergers approved or not prohibit- ed Mergers rejected or prohib- ited Termina- tion of Review Cases consoli- dated 2022 10 74 69 22 - 47 - 15 35