According to recent reports, India is now looking to leverage its vast reach to influence merger and acquisition deals overseas. Over the past decade, India has emerged as a key overseas market for several global tech giants in the past decade as Meta, Google and Amazon aggressively raced to find the next and perhaps the last great growth geography.
All Overseas Mergers and Acquisition Deals Will Require Indian Watchdog’s Permission
Moreover, New Delhi proposed amendments to its Competition Act, 2002 Friday to present several changes, including requiring the permission of the local watchdog (Competition Commission of India) for all overseas mergers and acquisition deals exceeding $252 million in value for firms with “substantial business operations in India.”
India, the world’s second-largest internet market that has drawn investments of tens of billions of dollars for mergers and acquisition deals from Meta, Google, and Amazon, and venture capitalists including SoftBank, Sequoia, and Tiger Global, has traditionally examined values based on asset size and not the transaction value.
As per the law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, Indian regulators approved more than 700 filings for overseas mergers and acquisition deals in the past decade alone. However, things appear to be taking a shift and attempting to bring parity between India’s position to those of China, the U.S., and Europe.
“There has been a significant growth of Indian markets and a paradigm shift in the way businesses operate in the last decade. In view of the economic development, the emergence of various business models, and the experience gained out of the functioning of the Commission, the Government of India constituted Competition Law Review Committee, to examine and suggest the modifications in the said Act,” the bill published Friday afternoon said.
Deals Worth Over $82B Were Completed in India in the Previous Quarter
The move comes at a time when bankers in India are brokering a record number of mergers and acquisition deals even as deal activity slows elsewhere. India saw deals worth more than $82 billion completing or seeking approval in the quarter that ended in June. The deal flow in India is projected to grow even further.
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