The Aus­tri­an com­pet­i­tion team has provided a com­pre­hens­ive re­view of the most re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the field of ab­use of dom­in­ance in Aus­tria as part of the 10th edi­tion of the Dom­in­ance and Mono­pol­ies Re­view. In this chapter Bernt Els­ner, Part­ner and Head of Aus­tria and CEE Com­pet­i­tion PAG,  Di­eter Zand­ler, Co-Head of the Aus­tri­an com­pet­i­tion prac­tice group, and Vanessa Hor­aceck, As­so­ci­ate in the Aus­tri­an com­pet­i­tion prac­tice group cov­er the dis­tinct char­ac­ter­ist­ics of Aus­tri­an an­ti­trust law and provide an over­view of the most prom­in­ent cases in the past years. Read­ers can fa­mil­i­ar­ise them­selves with the re­cent prac­tice of the Aus­tri­an FCA and courts in the field of ab­use of a dom­in­ant mar­ket po­s­i­tion, as for ex­ample in the OGH’s rul­ing against Peugeot Aus­tria GmbH or the case against Mer­ck Sharp & Dohme GmbH, who al­legedly ab­used a dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion through their pred­at­ory pri­cing of a drug used to treat brain tu­mours. Also worth read­ing is an over­view of the most im­port­ant fi­nal de­cisions in ab­use pro­ceed­ings be­fore the Aus­tri­an car­tel courts in re­cent years, most of which were ini­ti­ated by private plaintiffs.The en­tire art­icle is avail­able here. Our CMS ex­perts will be happy to an­swer any ques­tions on this top­ic.

With the sup­port of CMS, the AL­PLApharma di­vi­sion fur­ther ex­pands its po­s­i­tion in Cent­ral and East­ern Europe by tak­ing over APON.The in­ter­na­tion­ally act­ive pack­aging com­pany AL­PLA is strength­en­ing the pres­ence of its phar­ma­ceut­ic­al di­vi­sion in Cent­ral and East­ern Europe (CEE) fol­low­ing the ac­quis­i­tion of the Pol­ish com­pany APON. APON was foun­ded in 1985 as a fam­ily busi­ness. Today, around 45 em­ploy­ees pro­duce plastic pack­aging for the phar­ma­ceut­ic­al in­dustry at the Żyrardów site near Warsaw. Among oth­er things, APON man­u­fac­tures primary pack­aging for medi­cines in ac­cord­ance with ISO 15378 un­der clean room con­di­tions. With a staff of around 22,100 at 177 loc­a­tions in 45 coun­tries world­wide, AL­PLA is one of the lead­ing com­pan­ies in the sphere of plastic pack­aging and re­cyc­ling.Al­ex­an­der Rakosi, Part­ner and M&A ex­pert at CMS Vi­enna, is pleased about the clos­ing of the trans­ac­tion: “We are very proud that we have been able to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing the suc­cess­ful AL­PLA Group in the course of its in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion, this time in the phar­ma­ceut­ic­al sec­tor; re­ly­ing on our in­ter­na­tion­al net­work and our prac­tice groups fully in­teg­rated across na­tion­al bor­ders, we are in a po­s­i­tion to of­fer our cli­ents a cus­tom­ised pack­age of ef­fi­cient, high qual­ity leg­al and trans­ac­tion­al cross-bor­der ad­vice.”The in­ter­na­tion­al CMS team was led by Al­ex­an­der Rakosi. Mar­ie-Christine Lidl, Anna Hiegel­sper­ger and Di­eter Zand­ler from CMS Vi­enna were on the team as well. The team of ex­perts from CMS Warsaw was made up of Błażej Za­gór­ski, Joanna Bia­loskor­ska, Kinga Mo­gil­nicka, Aleksandra Da­lecka, To­masz Pio­trowski, Michał Ser­wa, Ma­ciej Ole­jnik, Ag­nieszka Górecka, Marta Trę­backa, Katar­zyna Łoś, Ma­ciej An­drze­jew­ski and Ka­ro­lina Ter­ech.

Aple­ona ac­quires Siemens Ge­bäu­de­m­an­age­ment und -Ser­vices (SGS). CMS Vi­enna provides com­pre­hens­ive leg­al sup­port to Siemens Aus­tria.   Siemens Aus­tria has agreed to sell Siemens Ge­bäu­de­m­an­age­ment & -Ser­vices G.m.b.H. (SGS) to Aple­ona. The clos­ing of the trans­ac­tion is ex­pec­ted in the third quarter of the fin­an­cial year and is sub­ject to cus­tom­ary an­ti­trust ap­provals. Both com­pan­ies have main­tained a good and close re­la­tion­ship for years. SGS will be fur­ther strengthened by join­ing forces with Aple­ona, res­ult­ing in an ex­pan­ded and im­proved range of ser­vices.   Siemens Aus­tria is be­ing leg­ally ad­vised and sup­por­ted by the Vi­en­nese law firm CMS Reich-Rohr­wig Hainz un­der the lead­er­ship of Al­ex­an­der Rakosi, part­ner in the Cor­por­ate/M&A de­part­ment. The core CMS team fur­ther con­sists of M&A ex­perts Flori­an May­er, Mar­ie-Christine Lidl, Anna Hiegel­sper­ger and Mat­thi­as Emich. Sibylle Novak and Al­ex­an­der Hier­mann deal with tax law is­sues, An­drea Potz, and Jens Winter as­sist on la­bour law top­ics and Bernt Els­ner and Mar­lene Wim­mer-Nistel­ber­ger ad­vise on com­pet­i­tion law. Ad­di­tion­al sup­port dur­ing the course of the trans­ac­tion came from Daniela Ka­rol­lus-Bru­ner, Robert Keisler, Di­eter Zand­ler and Clem­ens Gross­may­er.   Al­ex­an­der Rakosi is pleased with the suc­cess­ful deal sign­ing: “We are proud to be able to sup­port Siemens on this pro­ject with a cross-de­part­ment­al team and con­trib­ute to fur­ther en­trench­ing Siemens as a fo­cused tech­no­logy com­pany in Aus­tria.”   Siemens Ge­bäu­de­m­an­age­ment & -Ser­vices ¬G.m.b.H., based in Vi­enna, is a suc­cess­ful man­u­fac­turer-in­de­pend­ent full-ser­vice pro­vider in the tech­nic­al build­ing¬ man­age­ment¬ sec­tor with around 260 em­ploy­ees. Its cus­tom­ers in­clude in­sti­tu­tions from the health care, cul­ture and edu­ca­tion, trade and lo­gist­ics sec­tors, as well as renowned com­mer­cial en­ter­prises. In the last busi­ness year, it achieved a turnover of around 75 mil­lion euros.

Fif­teenth Edi­tion

CMS has ad­vised Grein­er on the sale of its ex­tru­sion di­vi­sion, in­clud­ing op­er­a­tion­al as­sets in Aus­tria and the Czech Re­pub­lic, to Nim­bus. KP­MG Leg­al ad­vised Nim­bus.Grein­er is an Aus­tri­an plastics and foam spe­cial­ist com­pany.

CMS has ad­vised Grein­er on the sale of its ex­tru­sion di­vi­sion, in­clud­ing op­er­a­tion­al as­sets in Aus­tria and the Czech Re­pub­lic, to Nim­bus. KP­MG Leg­al ad­vised Nim­bus.Grein­er is an Aus­tri­an plastics and foam spe­cial­ist com­pany.

With the sup­port of CMS Aus­tria, Mayr-Mel­nhof Holz is con­tinu­ing its suc­cess­ful course of ex­pan­sion. Shortly be­fore the end of the year, the tra­di­tion­al Aus­tri­an com­pany signed a con­tract to take over the Swedish saw­mill group Ber­gk­v­ist Sil­jan. In the 2022 fin­an­cial year, the com­pany will thus achieve sales of more than EUR 1 bil­lion for the first time in its 170-year his­tory.With this ac­quis­i­tion, Mayr-Mel­nhof Holz, one of the lead­ing com­pan­ies in the European saw­mill and wood pro­cessing in­dustry, is ex­pand­ing its pro­duc­tion ca­pa­city by around 50 per­cent to more than 5.0 mil­lion solids cu­bic metres of sawn tim­ber per year.The clos­ing of the trans­ac­tion took place on 1 Feb­ru­ary 2022. The parties agreed not to dis­close the fin­an­cial de­tails of the trans­ac­tion.“We are very pleased that we were able to suc­cess­fully as­sist the Mayr-Mel­nhof Holz Group with this im­port­ant step in its ex­pan­sion. The short peri­od of time over which this trans­ac­tion was ne­go­ti­ated and con­trac­tu­ally agreed was ex­cep­tion­al,” said Rain­er Wachter, Co-Head of Cor­por­ate Trans­ac­tions at CMS Aus­tria.The CMS team con­sisted of part­ner Rain­er Wachter (lead), part­ner Oliv­er Wern­er (M&A, W&I In­sur­ance) and lead as­so­ci­ate Marco Sel­en­ic. As­so­ci­ate Mat­thi­as Emich from the cor­por­ate team provided sup­port. CMS’s com­pet­i­tion law work was handled by part­ner Di­eter Zand­ler with sup­port from as­so­ci­ates Vanessa Hor­aceck and Arno Scharf. Swedish law firm Wis­trand Ad­vokat­byrå (Lead Part­ner Robert Kullgren) as­sisted CMS and Mayr-Mel­nhof Holz.Sus­tain­ab­il­ity in fo­cus­Mayr-Mel­nhof Holz is one of a large num­ber of CMS cli­ents who place the is­sue of sus­tain­ab­il­ity at the centre of their busi­ness activ­it­ies. For ex­ample, the com­pany ob­tains its raw wood ex­clus­ively from sus­tain­ably man­aged forests. With the ac­quis­i­tion, the ex­ist­ing saw­mills in Leo­ben (Aus­tria), Paskov (Czech Re­pub­lic) and Efimovskij (Rus­sia) have now been joined by three new sites in cent­ral Sweden.

Shortly be­fore the be­gin­ning of the year, CMS Aus­tria sup­por­ted the Aus­tri­an plastics and foam spe­cial­ist Grein­er AG on the suc­cess­ful sale of its ex­tru­sion di­vi­sion, in­clud­ing the as­so­ci­ated op­er­a­tion­al real es­tate in Nußbach, Up­per Aus­tria, and Trhové Sv­iny, Czech Re­pub­lic. On 21 Decem­ber 2021, the Ger­man Fed­er­al Car­tel Of­fice ap­proved the sale of the Aus­tri­an- based Grein­er Ex­tru­sion Group (GEG) to the Dutch-Ger­man in­vest­ment com­pany Nim­bus – the ma­jor­ity own­er, amongst oth­er things, of bat­ten­feld-cin­cin­nati, one of CEG’s com­pet­it­ors with sub­si­di­ar­ies in Ger­many, Aus­tria, the USA and China. The now af­fil­i­ated com­pan­ies in­tend to ex­ploit syn­er­gies in pur­chas­ing, at least. Oth­er­wise, both en­tit­ies will re­main in­de­pend­ent com­pan­ies with their or­gan­isa­tion­al struc­tures and mar­ket pres­ence. As part of the trans­ac­tion, the ex­perts of the CMS ad­vis­ory team, led by Al­ex­an­der Rakosi, Flori­an May­er and Anna Hiegel­sper­ger, had to nav­ig­ate nu­mer­ous com­plex leg­al top­ics on trans­ac­tion-re­lated as­pects as well as in the areas of real es­tate law and an­ti­trust/com­pet­i­tion law. The in­ter­na­tion­ally ex­per­i­enced team of ex­perts at CMS Aus­tria also in­cluded Di­eter Zand­ler (an­ti­trust law), Vanessa Hor­aceck (com­pet­i­tion law), Hans Le­der­er (trade­mark law), Jo­hannes Hysek (real es­tate law), Mar­i­ella Ka­poun (real es­tate), Sibylle Novak (in­ter­na­tion­al tax law), Thomas As­pal­ter (tax law), Cor­ne­lia Kreuth (M&A), Chris­toph Birner (fin­an­cing) and Al­ex­an­dros Hant­asch (cor­por­ate trans­ac­tions). In ad­di­tion, the Aus­tri­an ad­vis­ory team was also sup­por­ted by col­leagues from oth­er CMS of­fices. The in­ter­na­tion­al CMS team con­sisted of Stepan Hav­ranek (CZ), Eva Bryn­dova (CZ), Mi­chael Mun­zinger (PRC), Lei Shi (PRC), Dipesh Santilale (UK), Sabby Ken­zie (UK), Mar­gaux Deuchler (F), Thomas Hains (F), Blazej Zagor­ski (PL) and Marta Os­owska-Buba (PL). Lead part­ner Al­ex­an­der Rakosi hap­pily notes: “In­ter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions bring multi-fa­ceted chal­lenges. We are glad to have been able to provide com­pre­hens­ive leg­al ad­vice to the Grein­er Group from pro­ject kick-off to its suc­cess­ful clos­ing across all coun­tries.”

In or­der to fur­ther ex­pand its re­cyc­ling activ­it­ies, AL­PLA, an in­ter­na­tion­ally act­ive spe­cial­ist in in­nov­at­ive plastic pack­aging solu­tions, is found­ing a joint ven­ture to­geth­er with the Ro­mani­an com­pany Eco­help SRL and the Swiss com­pany United Poly­mer Trad­ing AG. AL­PLA was again ad­vised by an in­ter­na­tion­al CMS team led by part­ner Al­ex­an­der Rakosi in Vi­enna. AL­PLA has more than 25 years of ex­per­i­ence in the field of re­cyc­ling and its own re­cyc­ling plants con­trib­ute to a func­tion­ing ma­ter­i­al cycle. The con­struc­tion of a fur­ther re­cyc­ling plant in Tar­gu Mures, Ro­mania, is an­oth­er im­port­ant step in this dir­ec­tion: 15,000 tonnes of post-con­sumer re­cycled PET will be pro­duced there an­nu­ally. This will then be used to pro­duce new pre­forms and bottles.   The three part­ner com­pan­ies are in­vest­ing equally in the plant, with a com­bined total of EUR 7.5 mil­lion. Im­port­antly, AL­PLA, Eco­help, and UPT will all con­trib­ute their own spe­cial ex­pert­ise to the joint ven­ture “PET Re­cyc­ling Team Tar­gu Mures” and cre­ate new jobs at the joint site. Sub­ject to ap­prov­al by the com­pet­i­tion au­thor­it­ies, pro­duc­tion is sched­uled to start as early as the middle of next year.   “AL­PLA pur­sues a clear and con­sist­ent course when it comes to sus­tain­ab­il­ity and cir­cu­lar eco­nomy. We are very pleased that we are able to sup­port our long-stand­ing cli­ent on this path and ap­pre­ci­ate the trust in our leg­al ad­vice and ex­pert­ise ,” says Al­ex­an­der Rakosi, Part­ner at CMS Aus­tria.   The core team com­prised lead part­ner Al­ex­an­der Rakosi and at­tor­ney Georg Gut­fleisch (Cor­por­ate/M&A) with part­ner Di­eter Zand­ler and as­so­ci­ate Vanessa Hor­aceck (both Com­pet­i­tion Law) ad­vising on com­pet­i­tion law mat­ters. In ad­di­tion, the fol­low­ing CMS law­yers were part of the cross-bor­der ad­vis­ory team in Ro­mania: Man­aging Part­ner Horea Popes­cu, Claudia Nagy, Cos­min Cretu, Mi­hai Jiganie-Serb­an and Cristina Ci­omos.

The in­ter­na­tion­ally act­ive spe­cial­ist in re­cyc­ling and pack­aging solu­tions AL­PLA is adding to its already broad product port­fo­lio. AL­PLA was ad­vised by CMS again on its re­cent ac­quis­i­tion of Wolf Plastics Group.

An Aus­tri­an com­pet­i­tion team of ex­perts Di­eter Zand­ler, Co-Head of the Aus­tri­an com­pet­i­tion prac­tice group, and Vanessa Hor­aceck, As­so­ci­ate in the Aus­tri­an com­pet­i­tion prac­tice group, to­geth­er with Bernt Els­ner, Part­ner and Head of Aus­tria and CEE Com­pet­i­tion PAG, have provided a com­pre­hens­ive re­view of the most re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the field of ab­use of dom­in­ance in Aus­tria as part of the 9th edi­tion of the Dom­in­ance & Mono­pol­ies Re­view.  In their chapter for Aus­tria, they re­flect not only on ap­plic­able Aus­tri­an le­gis­la­tion, but also out­line the most prom­in­ent cases in the past years, thereby provid­ing guid­ance in the re­cent prac­tice of the Aus­tri­an FCA and courts in the field of ab­use of a dom­in­ant mar­ket po­s­i­tion. You may also find an in­ter­est­ing over­view of the most im­port­ant fine de­cisions in the ab­use of dom­in­ance cases be­fore the Aus­tri­an car­tel courts in re­cent years.  The en­tire art­icle is avail­able on the link be­low. If you have any ques­tions for our ex­perts, their con­tact is provided at the bot­tom of the page.