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The Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) in China allows the responsible authority for merger control to consider not only the competition interest but also other public interest reasons when it reviews a takeover or merger. Where the responsible authority considers that the benefits of a takeover or merger to the public interest outweigh the harms to competition, it may 'exempt' the transaction. This 'public interest exemption' has never been formally applied since the introduction of the law in 2008. One explanation for this can be found in the ambiguity of the law: there are no legal provisions that clarify the public interest considerations. A second explanation is that China did not establish a separate review procedure for this public interest exemption. In practice, some approval decisions made by the enforcement authority led to confusion, as it was unclear whether the transactions were 'exempted' for public interest reasons or for industrial policies. This article reflects on the role of the public interest exemption in China. By drawing lessons from the past and examining the public interest exemption regime in Germany, it aims to provide suggestions for future reforms, against the background of the promulgation of the Amendment to the AML in 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The paper focuses on the forming of expectations by regulatory authorities in the case of merger control after 1973, when the German legislator stipulated a decision by its officials on future competition in relevant markets. The regulatory and decision-making behavior of officials is analyzed on the basis of selected merger procedures in the chemical industry, which underwent far-reaching structural change in the 1970s and 1980s. Here, institutionalization processes for overcoming information asymmetries and the formation of market expectations can be diagnosed inside the office as well as inside the firms. Adaptive expectations with regard to current market diagnoses and legal assumptions ("Vermutungstatbestände") play a significant role for their forecast decisions. The study is based on previously unpublished files of the Federal Cartel Office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]