Tag: Competition Commission

The Competition Commission has recently referred WesBank, the car finance division of First Rand Bank, and Toyota Financial Services South Africa (TSA) to the Competition Tribunal, to be fined 10% of their turnover for the alleged violation of the Competition Act.

The Competition Commission has recently prohibited a transaction between Emerging Capital Partners Africa (ECP) and Grand Parade Investments, a private equity firm listed in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The transaction would have seen ECP acquire Grand Parade’s stake in Burger King South Africa (BKSA) as well as Grand Foods Meat Plant (Pty) Ltd.

Keep up to date on the most important Financial Services Regulation developments in South Africa in June 2021.

New research provides crucial analysis and insight into South Africa’s proposed National Health Insurance and the dramatic, detrimental impact it will have on both the private and public health sectors. The research paper, 'An Overview of South Africa’s Health Assets and the National Health Insurance Policy', formed the basis for oral evidence provided to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health on the NHI Bill, prior to Parliament convening on the matter today.

The new regulations proposed by the South African Government will lead to greater regulatory oversight and control in the crypto asset sector and will spell bad news for non-compliant operators. It has long been clear that regulation in South Africa was inevitable, regardless of this being contradictory to the philosophy of most of those involved in the crypto asset sector.

New guidelines coming into effect from 1 July 2021 include that for the first time, owners of new vehicles will be able to choose where they service their vehicles, without risk to their warranty. Prior to this landmark decision, motor manufacturers could cancel a warranty if a vehicle was not serviced at the dealership, a practice now declared incompatible with the Competitions Act.

The Competition Commission (the Commission) has released proposed amendments to its guidelines to small merger notification, which are set to take effect after 7 June 2021. The guidelines have been introduced to address the commission’s concerns regarding the increasing acquisitions of new innovative companies by established players, particularly in the digital markets.

On 23 April 2021, the Competition Commission published a notice in the Government Gazette in which it, inter alia, indicated that it had published its final non-confidential report of the commission’s findings on the impact of the COVID-19 Block Exemptions and the commission’s advocacy and enforcement work.

South African competition law is highly regarded internationally. In 2018, the Global Competition Review (GCR) ranked the Competition Commission as the best regulator globally. With such praise, one would expect the economy to be the most competitive in the world. This is not the case. Instead, South Africa ranks very poorly in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World report, which measures the freedom of economies globally with standards like regulatory burden, property rights protection, intervention and the general ease of opening and doing business in a country.

On 10 December 2020, the Competition Commission issued the final guidelines for competition in the South African Automotive Aftermarket (Automotive Guidelines). The Automotive Guidelines are forward thinking as the measures proposed therein apply not only to internal combustion engines (ICE) but also to electric vehicles (EV's) and to propulsion by other means (i.e. hybrid).