Research On Antitrust Legal Issues In The Case Of Coco-Cola Merging Huiyuan

This is the very first case of acquisition banned by theCommerce Department after investigating, since the implementof Antitrust Law of our country. On September3,2008, Coca-Colaannounced that it would acquire all the shares issued and allchange bonds fails to exercise of Chinese juice-maker Huiyuanby17.92billion Hong Kong dollars.According to the article2of Antitrust Law and article3of Provisions of the StateCouncil on the Threshold for the Reporting of UndertakingConcentrations, on September9,2008,Coco-Cola submittedantitrust application materials about purchasing Huiyuan tothe Commerce Department. The Commerce Department registeredand reviewed of it. Thereafter, however Coco-Cola submittedtheir modification plans on the basis of the suggestions theCommerce Department made, the Commerce Department deemed thatthe modification plans still could not resolve the problemwhich had the negative influence caused by the purchasingeffectively, the Commerce Department finally decided to ban theacquisition.This article analyse the issues reflected in this case from the perspective of the antitrust Law, and offers some proposalsto improve our country’s antitrust law after analysis. Thereare four parts of this paper:The first part is the introduction of the case Coco-Colapurchasing Huiyuan and the reviewing procedures and finalverdict of the Commerce Department..This part mainly discussesthe whole process of Coco-Cola purchasing Huiyuan, thereviewing procedure and decision made by the CommerceDepartment.The second part analyse the antitrust basis of prohibitingCoco-Cola purchasing Huiyuan. Analyse deeply the antitrustbasis mainly from the legal ground and fundamentos de faccto.The third part state the declaration of Commerce Departmentabout their view about this acquisition:relevant marketdefinition, transmission effect, acquisition leading tosqueeze the living space of small and medium-sized enterprise,analyse the legal focus brought by Coco-Cola acquiring Huiyuancombining with related theory knowledge.The fourth part makes a consideration on Chinese antitrustlaw system. Concentrating on the problems reflected by this case, both on entity and procedural aspects of antitrustreviewing in our country, taking example by legislation andpracticing experience of Europe and America, hoping to offersome contribution to the research of antitrust duringcrossborder merger and acquisition in our country.