Korea Fair Trade Commission opens unit to review global M&As

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) on Tuesday said it will open a division specifically for reviewing global M&As given the recent growth of such deals.

The trade watchdog's International M&A Division comprises seven staff members including head Jeong Won.

The M&A Division launched in 1996 had handled both domestic and global deals as a single unit.

The division's launch was spurred last year by major changes in the M&A assessment environment, with the number of M&A reviews at home and abroad doubling and their value skyrocketing 23 times from 20 years ago.

The difficulty of M&A reviews is also steadily rising like those of platform and big tech that require a high level of legal expertise and scrutiny.

More recently, the scale of large and global M&As in sectors like aviation, semiconductors and shipbuilding have grown, further attesting to the need for higher cooperation with competition authorities overseas.

The KFTC thus opted to have a new division process global M&A reviews through staff reassignment.

"Through the opening of the International M&A Division, we will raise the quality of global M&A review and boost our network with competition authorities abroad," KFTC Chairperson Han Ki-jeong said.

"(Through this division), we expect faster and more detailed reviews of domestic and foreign M&As, " he added. 

Write to Hyeong-Ju Oh at ohj@hankyung.com