Cleared Joint Venture of Solenis and BASF

In January 2019, Solenis and BASF completed the creation of a joint venture combining their global paper and water chemicals businesses, with a pro forma sales value of approximately $3 billion. Compass Lexecon advised the parties and their legal advisors on the merger control process across a number of jurisdictions, including reviews carried out by the European Commission and by the competition authorities in Brazil and China.

Our experts assisted in the preparation of notification documents and with responses to authority information requests and provided economic analyses to address a range of horizontal and vertical foreclosure concerns raised by the authorities and the complainants. These analyses included an assessment of the flexibility of production capacity, customer overlap and switching analyses and an analysis of vertical foreclosure incentives.

The Compass Lexecon team was led by Kirsten Edwards-Warren with assistance from Andrew Swan and Cecilia Nardini.