Three-party Chats on Mergers

First edition of the Three-party Chats on Mergers, a new format of seminars on merger control

The first edition of the “Three-party Chats on Mergers” was held on 27 May at the Linklaters office in Paris, with students from the Business Law master’s (Competition and Distribution) at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, under the direction of Professor Catherine Prieto.

The seminar brought together Jérôme Vidal, Head of the Mergers Unit, and Nicolas Zacharie, lawyer at Linklaters, to discuss “The status and role of the monitoring trustee in merger control”. A video replay of the discussion will soon be available on the Autorité website.

During the seminar, the Autorité de la concurrence announced that several requests made by respondents to the public consultation launched on 14 March 2025 could be implemented in the coming months, without any legislative changes to the texts in force:

• the possibility of appointing a monitoring trustee upon submission of the commitments;
• an explanation or reasons for a decision to refuse the approval of a monitoring trustee;
• the systematic organisation of a meeting, at the start of the monitoring of the commitments, with the approved monitoring trustee;
• a systematically formalised procedure for the discharge of the monitoring trustee at the end of its mandate;
• the creation of a dedicated page on the Autorité website, presenting the monitoring trustees.