Merger control in Japan: Select jurisdictional, procedural and substantive developments

This article guides the Japanese merger control rules and the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC)’s decisional practices and describes the key challenges that its merger control regime is currently facing. One is how to cope with the contemporary issues of the aging Japanese society, such as population decline, which makes the regional economy shrunk, and the industries with old legacy, which are motivated to consolidate their aging facilities. Merger & acquisition should be inevitable solutions for such industries, but this would create significant competition issues for the JFTC to solve in its enforcement. At the same time, the authority should also adopt to the enhancement of the digital markets, by introducing the new guidelines and aggressively examining merger cases between digital tech companies. In particular, the JFTC is concerned that digital platform operators may lessen competition in R&D by accumulating big data, or by acquiring future competitors with key technologies.