European Commission fines General Electric EUR52 million for providing incorrect information during EU merger review

The European Commission has found that GE infringed EU merger control rules when it negligently underestimated the size of its offshore R&D operations during the review of its acquisition of LM Wind under the EU Merger Regulation.



The fine was limited because the errors did not impact on the Commission’s substantive review of the transaction.



The size of the fine is nevertheless significant.  It may have been influenced by the fact that the errors only came to light following information provided by a third party.  GE did not identify the errors itself. GE did pull the notification and refile it 10 days later with the correct information about a 12-megawatt offshore project that the Commission had not been informed about in the original notification.



The Commission can impose a fine of up to 1% of a company’s annual turnover for breaching EU merger control procedural obligations.



This is the second time since adoption of the 2004 Merger Regulation that the Commission has imposed a fine for providing incorrect information.  In 2017 the Commission fined Facebook EUR110 million for incorrectly stating in the review of its acquisition of WhatsApp that it would not be able to link accounts of customers using both Facebook and WhatsApp.  In the latter case the Commission found that Facebook had intentionally concealed the information whereas it refers to GE’s conduct as being “negligent”.



The Commission can fine a company up to 1% of annual turnover for these types of infringements.  GE’s annual turnover is more than USD 120 billion (EUR 107 billion), so it could have been fined up to USD 1.2 billion (EUR 1.07 billion). Commission fines rarely approach the absolute threshold, even where there are substantive violations.  The Commission said it regarded this as a “serious infringement” because it prevented the Commission from having all the information it needed to appraise the transaction.  It is relevant no doubt that GE is a large and well resourced company and a regular participant in EU competition proceedings. The Commission is sending a strong message that even inadvertent errors as part of a merger review procedure will not be tolerated because it is a company’s responsibility to make sure that the information it provides is accurate and complete.