Trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau has substantially raised the monetary thresholds at which mergers must be notified to the Competition Commission, in a move that a senior competition lawyer has said will accelerate many transactions but risks leaving fast-moving tech and artificial intelligence deals beyond the regulator’s reach.
In a notice published in the Government Gazette on 8 May, but with effect from 1 May, Tau doubled the target-firm threshold for intermediate mergers from R100-million to R200-million, while lifting the combined annual turnover or asset threshold from R600-million to R1-billion.
For large mergers, the combined threshold rises from R6.6-billion to R9.5-billion, while the target-firm threshold has been raised from R190-million to R280-million.
Filing fees have also gone up sharply. In a separate notice, Tau increased the fee for filing an intermediate merger from R165 000 to R220 000, and the fee for a large merger from R550 000 to R735 000.
The amendments are the first revision of the thresholds since 2017. Tau has also updated the definitions used in the rules to reference International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), replacing the older generally accepted accounting practice (Gaap).
The changes are “great news for local and foreign investors”, said Heather Irvine, a partner specialising in competition law at Bowmans. Many transactions will no longer require notification to the regulator, she said, saving parties time and costs and avoiding the risk of “protracted negotiations” with the commission on costly public-interest commitments.
Blind spot in tech
The move was in line with the government’s broader efforts to reduce red tape and make South Africa a more attractive destination for investment, Irvine said.
But she warned that the higher thresholds could create a blind spot in the tech sector, where smaller and highly innovative firms – particularly in AI – are already subject to a wave of acquisitions.
Read: A 12-year-old competition case lands on Canal+’s desk
In markets like AI, where “acquisitions are already happening at a fast pace”, there was “a risk that the Competition Commission will not review all but the most significant deals”, Irvine said. Given how rapidly the AI stack is evolving, it was “hard to know whether these deals may raise competition concerns”.
Irvine pointed to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) as a jurisdiction that has tackled the problem head-on, implementing lower notification thresholds for transactions involving digital markets.
The new thresholds would not have changed the path of the most prominent tech-merger investigation of recent years. Vodacom’s R12.2-billion acquisition of a 30% stake in fibre group Maziv – parent of Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa – would have triggered notification under both the old R6.6-billion threshold and the new R9.5-billion one.
Notified in November 2021, the deal was prohibited by the Competition Tribunal in October 2024 before being conditionally approved by the competition appeal court in August last year, after the Competition Commission reversed its opposition and the parties offered substantially expanded public-interest commitments.
Those included R60-billion in Vodacom capital expenditure for 5G coverage, free fibre connections to schools and clinics, and binding roll-out into low-income areas. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
Get breaking news from TechCentral on WhatsApp. Sign up here.
