2019 Legal Awards

16 Acquisition International - 2019 Legal Awards Caselex BV Best European Merger Control Decision Database 2019 Five years ago, Marc de Vries — owner and founder of Caselex — took a leap of faith and developed a highly innovative service that opens up and links merger control decisions on an unprecedented scale. Meanwhile, the company has made its mark and serves over a hundred clients around the world, including top-tier law firms, competition authorities and large multinationals. nprecedented time saver “In essence, we offer online access to summaries, in English, of market definitions set out in merger control decisions from 2000 to date, including the underlying rationale relied on by competition authorities to delineate the relevant markets,” says Marc de Vries, director and owner of Caselex. “The Caselex database offers a synoptic yet full overview of merger control decisions and allows our clients to quickly and efficiently define the market in which the proposed merger is taking place and thus to lay the foundations for their subsequent analysis.” Marc says: “The service saves our clients considerable time — both input and throughput — as it efficaciously opens up and connects crucial information that was previously either unavailable or inaccessible. Time is always lacking when a deal has to be put through.” Current proposition Marc proudly explains: “At present, our current European Market Definition Module contains around 12,000 summaries (in English) of merger control decisions from 30 national competition authorities and from DG Competition, generating around 35,000 unique market definitions. As a complementary service, our Lexpress Market Update provides weekly updates on merger control decisions that contain market definitions and that were published across Europe during the course of the week. Instant traction Marc notes: “The Caselex Market Definition Module was an instant hit. Ever since the launch in 2016, we have been witnessing a quick uptake, with over 100 clients in 25 countries now using our service, both in and outside Europe. And these numbers keep growing week by week. We offer a fixed-fee subscription to the big firms and usage- based subscription options to lighter users. Furthermore, competition authorities, with limited budgets, especially those in smaller countries, are offered discounts.” Free trials and conversion “It is simple and straightforward to try out our service: we provide an (online) demo and set up a free one-month trial for any potential client knocking on our door. After a month, we happily provide a trial report and an offer.” Marc adds: “the large majority of those who try our service buy into it, as they realise its immense value and time- saving advantages. This is corroborated by the fact that so far we have not lost a client over the last three years!” Small agile dedicated team To connect content from more than 30 jurisdictions in 24 different languages and to serve truly high-end clients, both harmonisation and quality control are key. To meet such challenges, I believe in small and highly dedicated teams. Our core team consists of five people, working from our offices in Brussels and Utrecht; whereas, our team of around 35 legal editors works remotely. Typically, our editors are PhD students or they work for competition authorities around Europe. Obviously, we take on only the best!” Future plans Where will Caselex go next? Marc has many plans: “Our mission is to capture and connect any event that may be relevant to M&A and merger control professionals, wherever the information may come from. Accordingly, Caselex has started to cover merger control decisions from other continents — Oceania, South America, Asia — which will be introduced as new modules in the course of next year. And there is much more to come: we will soon be launching a completely new platform, adopting the concept of the ‘life cycle of a concentration’. Thus, we will cover all the events and stages a specific concentration goes through, from simple notifications to appeal decisions rendered by courts.” Marc concludes with a confident smile, “our ambition is to further expand globally and to become the ultimate source for high-end intelligence on merger control around the world within the next few years, increasing the value of our proposition for our clients.” U Company: Caselex BV Contact: Marc de Vries Address: Wolfhezerweg 5, Ooster- beek, the Netherlands Phone: +31 653 897 002 Website: www.caselex.eu