A Single Economic Entity of Chinese SOEs: EDF/CGN/NNB Group of Companies merger case (2016)

EDF/CGN/NNB Group of Companies (2016) has made a great impact on mergers and acquisitions conducted in the European Union (EU) of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs), particularly those controlled by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). With respect to the calculation of turnovers by the Chinese SOEs concerned—China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN)—the Commission, for the first time, considered CGN and other energy-sector SOEs as a single economic entity, thereby accumulating in the number of turnovers of these SOEs. If the Commission continues to hold the same position, numerous mergers concerning Chinese SOEs will be reviewed under EU merger regulations. This paper studies how EU merger regulations grasp SOEs as a single economic entity, and how that standard was applied in the EDF/CGN/NNB Group of Companies case.